


bad luck (always came in threes)

by shuofthewind



Series: between disaster and atrocity [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Elektra (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Darcy Never Met Jane, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Bechdel Test Pass, Bisexual Female Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Catholic Guilt, Darcy Is Allergic To Feelings, Elektra Natchios Is Better Than All of You, Especially To Himself, F/F, F/M, Family Issues, Feminist Themes, Foggy Nelson Has The Patience Of A Saint, Matt Is Very Good At Lying, Mental Health Issues, Moral Ambiguity, Multi, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Queer Themes, Swearing, The Little Violent Tricycle That Could, lots of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 11:36:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 65,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5926978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“People who are different have a knack for finding each other,” she remembers her therapist saying, and Elektra had never believed him. Not until now.</p><p>[In which three furiously passionate and passionately furious people unexpectedly find mirrors in each other, and Foggy really, really, really needs a drink. Alternating POV. Inspired by, but not a part of, <em>The Price of War</em> 'verse. DevilSaiShock.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Price of War](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3903400) by [shuofthewind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind). 



> Trigger warnings for this one include: canon-typical violence (just...one big _Daredevil_ sticker) but also references to alcoholism, depression, emotional abuse, emotional manipulation, emotional abuse and manipulation by a parent, intimate partner abuse, misogyny, referenced/implied transphobia, implied/referenced pedophilia, references to psychiatric hospitals, references to mental breakdowns, references to symptoms of OCD (that's gone into below), Catholic Guilt (TM), and self-confidence issues/self-loathing. 
> 
> I will never not write Elektra as neurodivergent. In _The Man Without Fear_ comics she's described as hearing voices, implied to be psychotic or psychopathic, and being committed to an institution as a child and cheating her way out by “pretending to be normal.” I've amended this, because I think that it's an awful interpretation of a character who is already frequently misinterpreted/misused by male comic writers (don't get me started on Frank Miller, okay) and the fact that the "but Elektra is totally cray" card is played all the time while Matt gets to be righteous and gross actually makes me furious. 
> 
> Almost all of Elektra's symptoms described (they're only vaguely referenced in this chapter, but they're developed more over the rest of the fic) are things that I, as a person with anxiety issues and obsessive-compulsive disorder, have done, or things that people I know with OCD have done. I do not go into them in extreme detail simply because it a) makes me feel uncomfortable to delve into it too deeply and b) Elektra is not a person who goes and picks over all the bones of her past like, say, Matt does. However, if I offend anyone with the depiction, I apologize. 
> 
> Next two chapters will be up in the next half an hour. Read, but unbeta'ed. 
> 
> This Darcy is TPoW Darcy, but you don't need to read TPoW to understand/keep up with/know what's happening.
> 
> Portmanteau: DevilSaiShock. Preach it.
> 
> (Addendum: This is the twelfth fucking time I've tried to post this because the AO3 servers were being whiny, so...let it be known I've been trying to do this for like, 24 hours by now.)
> 
> (Additional addendum: Oh, hey, look! 50th fic on AO3! Woop.)

They meet three times before they actually speak.

The first time, she’s in an alley and there are guys all over her. Another addition to the pack is almost unnoticeable. He’s in and out fast, taking down the bastard holding a baseball bat, and she only catches a glimpse of his profile, a flicker of his mouth and jaw. Then he’s gone, and she been left behind to look down at the wreckage. She’d wonder if she had imagined him, if not for the man lying on the ground with a compound fracture, a bone she doesn’t remember snapping.

The second time, she sees a shadow on a nearby rooftop and chases it. She follows him for two hours in a zig-zagging trail across Hell’s Kitchen before he finally shakes her off near the waterfront. The next night, when she goes back to the same spot, there’s a piece of typing paper pinned to the side of the water tower, where no one could have snatched it away. _You could just say hello next time_ , is the typed message, and she folds it up and keeps it in her wallet for reasons she’s not entirely sure of. As proof that she’s not hallucinating, maybe.

The third time, she finds him beating the shit out of a drug dealer, and he’s the one to chase her, tracking her for seventeen blocks at full speed before she snags a police officer to play lost damsel. She turns and waves to him when the cop’s not looking, because she knows exactly where he is, crouched just beyond the shadowy mouth of the nearest alley, knuckles bloody, watching her. _Better luck next time_ , she mouths, and catches a taxi to her father’s office. It’s the middle of the night, and her father’s not even there—he’s at a Washington summit, she thinks, but she hasn’t heard from him since the start of her junior year, so there’s really no way for her to know. Still, Nikolas lets her in anyway, because he thinks she’s pretty, and he likes her accent. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t play it up to get her way.

This time she’s the one to pin a note to the water tower. _You could say hello, too, instead of chasing shadows in the dark._

She’d call it a game, if it was anything close. It’s less than that, more than that. It’s not a game, it’s a hunt. It’s not a hunt, it’s a contest. It’s not a contest, it’s a race, a recognition, a knowing. Two people waiting for the same thing. (She wraps her knuckles under gauze and wears gloves when she goes out but it’s still not enough to stop the bruising. She tells people she’s taking krav maga, that the bag is new and her teacher’s brutal. None of these things are lies. It’s just not where she bruises her knuckles.)

A week after her note, in her Spanish class, the blind boy, Murdock, stops by the door as she’s about to go in. When he turns his head, there’s a purple smear on his jaw, and the curve of his mouth is a spark in her memory.

 _Ah,_ she thinks. _I recognize you._

“Hello,” he says, and Elektra smiles.

“Hello.” 

She’d say _it’s history_ after that, but history is changeable, interpretable. This is absolute. This just is.

.

.

.

They’ve been fucking for a few weeks before they finally get around to talking, which isn’t surprising to either of them. Matthew (she always calls him Matthew, because it sounds better, different from _Matt_ which makes him forgettable, different from the nameless shadow that trails her through the dark. To her, he’s Matthew, and it always makes his mouth curl and lift just a little to hear it) is in pre-law, criminal justice, but he doesn’t talk much. As for Elektra, she’s played too many games with words to trust them any longer, not even from herself. She’s had them turn on her one too many times to be bothered with them anymore.

Still, he tells her things. Only bits and pieces, but enough. He had a teacher, but the man’s long gone. His father’s dead. He grew up in an orphanage. He’s never killed anyone. His senses were an accident. (He tells her about those the first night they run together, clipped and careful and wary even though she can see every part of him straining to get to her. They last three hours before the race back to her apartment, and there’s asphalt and grime in her hair when he pushes her up against the wall inside the door and bites—) She gathers little scraps and puts them together in a moth-eaten tapestry, learns far more from his silence than any of his words.

Honestly, it’s more of a surprise that he keeps his tongue between his teeth for as long as he does. He’s curious, is Matthew Murdock. She supposes it comes from what he can do. He’s so used to sensing everything about the world around him that he can’t resist not knowing the whole of a person at once.

“Ask me,” she says one night. Her arms ache from a jump off a fire escape, and her legs ache from running, and the rest of her is warm and soupy and sparking with little aftershocks. Matthew’s braced next to her on the bed, his shoulders propped against the wall, face turned towards her. He’s not touching her. He’s just…listening, she thinks. To the city, maybe. To her heart. “I know you want to.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while. Elektra keeps her eyes open, but her hands to herself. There’s a mark on Matthew’s ribs that she thinks might have come from her teeth, fresh-looking. She’s started to count his inhales and exhales by the time he finally moves, sitting up slowly, like he’s been crushed under a semi.

“Why did you start doing this?”

“Doing what?” she says, but she’s smiling a little, baring her teeth, so he knows it’s a joke. Elektra rolls onto her belly, rests her cheek to a pillow. Her hair’s tangled against her back. “Why does it matter why I do it?”

Matthew lifts one shoulder. There’s a bruise patterned over his collarbone, dark and thrilling and shadowy. She wants to lick it, her own little bit of proof that there’s someone else like her, that she’s not the only one in the world like this. _You,_ she thinks. _You and I, we’re special. We’re different from the rest of them. I don’t know if you realize just how much._ “Guess it doesn’t really.”

She curls against the pillow, and waits for him to ask again. He doesn’t, though. Matthew’s eyelashes feather together against his cheek as he bends over her, shifts her hair aside, and puts his mouth to the nape of her neck. She’s not sure if it’s supposed to be a hint, or a calculation, or both, but that’s what it feels like. She turns her head so she can watch him, only shadows and scraps of light over his bruises, as Matthew moves again, and sets his lips to her spine, to the back of her shoulder. There’s a scar there that she can’t remember getting, and the tip of his tongue against the mark makes her whole body ache.

“Did you ever read _Crime and Punishment_?”

Matthew hums against her skin, and moves again, to the small of her back, lips and breath and tongue. “Once, during high school. Haven’t had the time since.” His mouth curls against her skin. “It’s a very long audiobook.”

Elektra closes her eyes. He touches her waist, her ribs, traces the line of her hip with his mouth. Husky, she says, “There’s a part where Raskolnikov remembers something he read. About a man that’s been condemned to die would rather live for eternity on a square yard on top of a rock than be executed. _Surrounded by an everlasting tempest_. _Only to live, to live and live._ ”

Matthew lifts his head, moves. She can feel warmth against her ear when he says, “And doing what we do—that keeps you living?”

That’s not something she’s going to answer. Elektra looks at the clock on her bedside table, counts the seconds as they go by. “Raskolnikov says, _Man is a vile creature! And vile is he who calls him vile for that._ ”

He sighs. Matthew rests his mouth against her neck, thinking. “Are you Raskolnikov, or the man sentenced to death?”

Elektra digs her nails into the pillow. Then she pushes away from the bed, sits up. Matthew follows her, drawn more than anything. She’s left another mark in the hollow of his throat. Elektra searches his face. Something feels raw, inside her. “I’m neither,” she says. “I was never sentenced, and I never fell. I chose to live on the edge, and I chose to step past it. Because I can, and I want to, and I will. Like you do.”

When she leans forward to kiss him, Matthew cups her face in his hands. It’s not soft, not when she pushes him back into the mattress. She thinks that might have been the start of the gentling, though.

The only class they share is Spanish. Elektra doesn’t go to his dorm room, not more than once. She’s not interested in his friends, particularly, and Matthew seems relieved when days pass and she never asks to meet them. She’s never bothered to draw a line, not the way he does, but he’s careful to keep parts of him separate. He’s too thin-skinned, she thinks, to manage it the way he could, even with all his control. Sometimes his silences are louder than screams. Elektra doesn’t belong to Matt Murdock, even if she and Matthew run wild across rooftops. Still, she sees the three of them around campus—he’d been obvious even before she’d started paying attention, no matter how big Columbia is, no matter how many people there are, simply because there had been a prickling at the back of her neck, predator and predator snarling through instinct—and she knows that there are two of them.

This handful of patchwork is even more vague, even more tattered. The first one, the roommate, she thinks he’s named after a weather pattern. She doesn’t know, really. From what she sees of him—at a distance, too far to hear—he’s about as exceptional as a cobblestone, and she can’t work out why Matthew is even interested. (When she actually meets Franklin Nelson, she realizes he’s less a stone than a cloud—puffy, of course, clean and removed, but with the chance to build into a thunderstorm. She understands it a little more, then, but still not very much.) There’s another one, a girl from the same department. She knows even less about the girl than she does about Nelson. Elektra doesn’t even know her name. She’s small, and dark, and wears heavy sweatshirts and awful hats. A part of her wonders if she ought to be jealous, but Elektra shuts it down. She and this girl, they’re in different worlds, and from what she sees, she has no reason to worry. Not about Matthew.

One night, though, she’s out alone. It doesn’t happen often, anymore—she waits, and she’s never waited on another person before but she can’t say she minds if it’s Matthew—but it does tonight. It’s midterms. Elektra, the English literature major, has already turned in all her papers and settled in to watch the rest of the college panic, but Matthew has exams, and it means he can’t spend quite so much time spiraling through alleys in the middle of the night. It’s near eight on a Friday, and every muscle in her body is jumping, so she steals out the back door of her apartment and flies over the rooftops, not caring if she’s seen, for once. She runs and drops, catches herself on edges and rebounds off of corners, harder and faster, away from her apartment and into Columbia, around the edges of the law library and up and over the fire escapes so she can see the gleam and the shattering of the city. There’s crime tonight, probably, but for once she doesn’t poke into it. She’s only running, breathing in the smells, swallowing the air and trying to make it a part of her. _Oxygen,_ she thinks. _Oxygen, carbon monoxide, sulfur, hydrocarbons and nitrogen, soot and smoke and blood and metal, every part of the city and everything we bring to it, all in the air, all of it absorbed into cells and muscles and bone. Breath in, breathe out, but you don’t lose the taint._ Elektra runs, and breathes.

She’s on the Barnard side of Columbia when she hears the trashcan hit the ground. Elektra rolls, and pops up again, cocks her head to listen. It’s not a cat, the crash was too big for that. She can’t hear anything but her heartbeat, for a minute. Then there’s another smash of metal on asphalt, and a yelp of what sounds like pain, and hell, guess she’s looking into crime, after all. ( _No,_ she tells herself, as she turns and leaps from one roof to the next, _no, you’re not looking for crime, you’re looking for pain, and you’ve found it and now you know you can give it_ —)

“—stop.” The voice is young, indeterminate. She’s not sure if it’s male or female. It’s cracked. “Please, just—you can have it, all right, just take it and go—”

“—need to learn you don’t get to fuck around with shit like this, stupid bitch—”

(—and that has Elektra’s whole body vibrating, every part of her skin prickling, because _stupid bitch_ and _fucking whore_ and _trash_ and _slut_ —)

“Michael,” says the voice, and she’s found them, the pair of them, a tall, pudgy man and a small figure shoved up against the wall under his forearm, face cast into shadow, “Michael, seriously, just—please just take it, I don’t need it anymore, I don’t want it—”

“Not the _fucking point—_ ”

“ _Hey_ ,” snaps another voice. A woman, loud and sharp. Not sharp like knives, but sharp like music, a wrong note blasting into her ear. The man named Michael turns just in time to get a fist in the face. It’s a good punch, Elektra thinks, a lot of weight behind it, and it slams him back away from the wall and onto the ground, right into a puddle from this morning’s rainstorm. It’s only after he’s down that she sees the hat, the shape of the girl in the sweatshirt, and thinks, _This has to be a joke._ The woman—woman? No, it’s a man—up against the wall puts a hand to his throat, and swallows. He’s wearing a Starbucks uniform. The light from the mermaid logo casts a strange green tinge over his face.

“Go inside, Zeke,” says the girl in the hat. She’s never heard the girl’s voice before. It’s not quite city, not quite country, something tinged around the consonants. She knows the sound of someone who’s trained themselves out of an accent. Elektra wonders where she’s from, this girl. “Just—go inside, okay?”

“No,” says Zeke. “I don’t—he just wants the phone back, he can have it, I don’t fucking care—”

“You hit me,” says Michael, and the girl in the hat gives him a withering look.

“I applaud your powers of observation. Zeke, _go inside—_ ”

“I don’t care about the phone!”

“You’re not giving him your goddamn phone over some stupid nudie shots!”

“Darce—”

“Shut up, Zeke.”

“You fucking hit me.” Michael puts a hand to his nose. It’s bleeding. Elektra wonders if it’s broken. “You fucking broke my fucking nose.”  

“Let’s get something clear here,” says the girl with the hat, and she stands out of reach, but she’s close enough to land another blow if she needs to. “You’re leaving. Right now. I don’t care where you go, but you don’t come back. Not to the shop, not to Zeke’s apartment, nowhere. You ever come anywhere near him again, I swear to God, I’ll do a hell of a lot worse than just putting you on your ass.”

On the ground, Michael’s all coiled energy, ready to spring. “You bitch,” he says, and the little hum in the back of Elektra’s head gets louder, tinny, like a hive of wasps. “You nosy fucking bitch.”

“Aw, honey.” The girl in the hat drops her hands away from her hips, and resettles her weight. There’s something about her, now, curling, licking at the air. It ghosts over her skin, sinks into her bones. The back of Elektra’s neck starts prickling at the look on the girl’s face. Open, she thinks, Maybe the first time it’s been open in a while. It hangs oddly on her lips, on her eyelids, like she’s used to pushing it back. “We haven’t even started yet.”

Zeke, the barista, looks at her with big eyes. So does the guy on the ground. He gets to his feet, brushes at the wet spot on his ass from the puddle. When he steps forward, the girl with the hat doesn’t budge. She stares at him, unblinking, her lips curved just slightly up, and waits. She’s a foot shorter and probably a hundred pounds lighter, but she sways like she’s ready to pounce, and the silent dare—it’s knives underneath her smile. It’s the whisper of scales in the dark. Elektra can see it when the bastard loses his nerve, in the way he licks his lips and how he turns his head just enough to see Zeke standing by the door, one foot raised, ready to bolt. He backs up out of reach.

“Fuck this,” he says. “I’m not getting into it with a freak and a whore.”

“Cute,” says the girl with the hat. She puts her hands on her hips. “That’s real cute. I’ll be sure to tell your mom you said that.”

For a second Elektra thinks he’s going to hit her. Then he scoffs, and backs up. “Fuck both of you,” he says, and then he’s gone. His bloody nose has left smears on the concrete. The girl in the hat heaves a breath, and then she’s just a girl again, turning towards Zeke, shaking her head a little.

“You okay?”

“Darcy,” says Zeke. “What the fuck.”

“Your ex is a jackass,” she says. “You need me to cover the rest of your shift so you can go home?”

“That’s—seriously, Darcy, what the _fuck._ ”

“I’m covering your shift.” She pushes at Zeke. “Take a taxi home. Lock the doors. You had the locks changed, right?”

“Of course I—Darcy—”

“ _Go_ , Zeke,” she snaps, and Zeke goes. He darts out of the alley without looking back. The girl in the hat doesn’t notice. She’s folding her hands in and out of fists, like she’s searching for something, some kind of sensation. As Elektra watches, she closes her eyes, heaves three breaths. The snap of her temper is muffled and wet, like breaking bone. She whirls, and kicks the dumpster as hard as she can. It makes a noise like a ringing gong, muffled through the garbage bags, and the girl in the hat shrieks, short and sharp and strangled. Then she pulls off her hat (her hair is curly, Elektra realizes, long and loose) and stalks in through the back door of the Starbucks.  

Elektra stays to make certain that the ex doesn’t follow her home. She spends all her time on the fire escape, thinking about image and reality.

.

.

.

It takes less effort than she thinks it will to convince Matthew that she wants to meet his friends. A month ago, maybe he would have said no. A month and a half? He definitely would have. But things are different, even if it’s just…slower. She’s not sure how to describe it other than _slower_ , because it’s not as if either of them have gentled. They have more silences than speech, and they’re both terrible at words, but it feels as though they’ve settled into something close to a rhythm. A month ago, he’d have said no. Now, he just sighs, and asks why.

She knows that he knows that she has a motive beyond just…normalcy (“Isn’t that what normal people do? Meet friends?” “Yes, but you’ve…never once been interested. At all.” And she tells him the truth, even if it’s only part of it, when she says, “Maybe I just didn’t have a reason to be interested before.”) but aside from blinking a few times and scoffing a little, he doesn’t argue with her.  

“You,” he says, “never do anything without a motive. So what are you looking for now?”

“I want to know why you like them,” she says, and leans her face into his hand when he touches her cheek. “If you don’t want me to meet them, then I won’t.”

Matthew makes a noise that’s crossed between a laugh and someone kicking him in the guts, and says, “Right to the heart, Elektra,” which means she’s won and they both know it. She’s still not entirely certain he wants her to be bridging that gap, between night and day and violence and peace, but he’s not going to argue with her about it.

It’s not as though they schedule anything. Elektra just kind of…coincidentally runs into them in the same Barnard-side Starbucks a week later, which elicits a lot of blinking from Nelson and a curious _aha, caught you_ look from the girl in the hat. “Darcy Lewis,” she says, as she shakes Elektra’s hand. She’s right-handed, and her knuckles are still bruised and purpling from the punch. One of them is scabbed over. It’s not the sort of damage that should have happened with a single blow. Elektra wonders if she’d gone to hit something else later. “You’re from Matt’s Spanish class, yeah?”

“Yes.” Lewis has not-quite-soft hands, like she’s used to working but hasn’t done it in a while. Elektra fights the urge to turn her hand palm-down, study the bruising. She lets go, and curls her fingers into Matthew’s shoulder. “Elektra Natchios.”

“Well, it’s lovely to meet you.” Lewis glances at the counter. Zeke the barista is there, a bruise on his cheek and an expression on his face that’s caught between fight and flight. “I should go talk to Zeke before he gets grumpy. I’ll be back. Do you want anything?”

“I already ordered.”

“I’ll grab it,” Lewis says, and vanishes. As soon as she gets to the order counter, Zeke darts away from the blenders to whisper at her. Under her hand, Matthew stills for an instant. Then he resettles himself, and turns his face up to Elektra.

“You’re early.”

“Class let out before the bell.” She peeks at Nelson through her hair before hooking it behind her ears. He’s ready to bolt, she thinks. Which doesn’t surprise her. “You don’t mind if I join you?”

“Why would we mind?” says Nelson, and Matthew makes a hiccupping sound. She’s pretty sure Nelson just kicked him in the ankle. “Nice to finally meet someone we’ve heard like…nothing about.”

“Foggy.”

“I’m not offended.” She settles in a chair. “It’s not as though there’s been much to talk about.” Elektra waits until Lewis is back in earshot, and then says, “You look familiar, though.”

Lewis freezes, like a rat in a trap. She blinks at Elektra. “I mean. I go into the Spanish department sometimes. I took a few classes.”

“No, I don’t think so.” Elektra leans back in her seat. “Weren’t you the one in the alley a few nights ago?”

“Alley?” Lewis echoes, but dull color is flushing up her neck into her cheeks. Elektra’s not even sure she’s aware of it. “The—what alley?”

“The one out back.” Elektra draws a few strands of hair over her shoulder, thoughtfully. “You stopped the fight that was going on.”

To her right, Matthew doesn’t go still. He fractures a little, crackling like frost under a boot heel. He doesn’t say anything.

“You saw that?” Lewis turns her face away, tips her head just enough that her hair falls in front of her eyes. She sits down. “Christ. Thought I’d managed to get away clean.”

Next to her, Nelson turns with a little squawking sound. “That’s why your hand is so fucked up? Darcy, Jesus Christ—”

“Keep your voice down,” Lewis snaps. She doesn’t look at the counter, but she wants to. It’s buzzing across her shoulders. “He was hitting Zeke, I couldn’t just let him do that—”

“So you hit back?” Nelson says, waspish. (There’s worry, though, in how he seizes Lewis’s hand and lifts it to check the bruising, in how he turns and shifts and glances at the counter like he’s waiting for someone to come at them. Elektra elects to forget the waspishness in the face of the care.) “Darcy—”

“You’re not my mom, Foggy, you don’t have to lecture me like I’m in elementary school.” She tugs her hand away, and hides it under the table. It’s flecked with bruises. “I caught him in the jaw, that’s the only reason why it looks so bad.”

“The guy’s like a foot taller than you, how—”

“He was bent over because he was shoving Zeke into a wall, okay, it made it easier.” Lewis pulls her hat down over her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Darce—”

“I _don’t_.”

“Darcy,” says Matthew, and Lewis peeks out from underneath the hat. It’s an odd tone, Elektra thinks. Like he’s strangling what he really wants to say in favor of something else. “You’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m okay.”

“Then we’re okay.”

Lewis looks at him for a second. Then her mouth cants a little to the side. She knocks a loose fist into Matthew’s shoulder, and goes back to her coffee. This might be some sort of ritual, because Nelson looks very exasperated, and Matthew just seems pleased. Elektra rests her elbows on the table. “It was impressive, anyway. I’m sorry I didn’t say something at the time, I just—didn’t have the chance.”

“I didn’t know anyone had even noticed, aside from me and Zeke. And Shitty Michael.”

“Has he said anything?”

Lewis shrugs. “Not so far as I can tell. I don’t think he wants to tell the cops he had his nose broken by some chick a foot shorter than he is. Which, cool, because I kind of want to be eligible to practice law in four years.” She glances at Nelson again (he’s drinking his coffee in silence, shoulders rigid) and then leans sideways into him before lifting both eyebrows at Elektra. Nelson sighs, and leans back into her, propping her up. That might also be some kind of ritual of reconciliation, because the longer it lasts, the more relaxed Nelson gets. “So, uh, yeah. Changing the subject because wow, that was not supposed to be remembered ever, you’re—lit, right? English?”

“Mostly. And you’re—”

“Criminal justice and political science.” Lewis looks at Matthew again, curiously, and then says, “So, like—do you actually _have_ midterms or finals? Because in the American lit class I took freshman year we just like…wrote essays and turned them in instead of having real exams and that means I have to hate you a little bit, because bitch, please.”

“Collectively I think I had to write about forty-seven pages worth of midterm papers, though,” Elektra says, and Nelson makes a noise like a deflating balloon.

“Still better than Ethics in Criminal Justice with Malone.”

“You’re still complaining about that?” Matthew says. Nelson rolls his eyes.

“Please, Mr. Star, kindly tell me why I should not be still complaining about Yvonne Malone giving me an A minus instead of an A because I had to go and help my sister in the hospital.”

“I mean, it was douchey, sure, but that’s not a midterm problem.”

“You don’t get to talk about this either,” says Nelson to Lewis. “She liked you. You were her pet. You get no say.”

“I was not Malone’s _pet_.”

“Alas, poor Yorick.”

“That’s not even an appropriate quote, Foggy, you’re just bitter because she caught you bitching about her grading policies and never forgave you for that—”

“Shut up.”

Matthew shifts, and his knee knocks into Elektra’s under the table. She’s not sure if it’s intentional or not.

That should, she thinks, be the end of looking into Lewis. (She uses Lewis because _Darcy_ feels oddly intimate. She doesn’t know this girl. She’s not her friend. Using her first name leaves a strange taste in her mouth, old leaves or rust or the bite of an unripe orange.) But nothing she hears about Lewis from either Matthew or Lewis herself explains it, that rush of fury that had left her clenching her hands into fists, over and over and over, the blaze underneath her smile. She doesn’t ask Matthew, because there’s no point to asking Matthew—he’d obfuscate, or get too curious, and she’s not sure she wants to tell him the reason why yet. He gets defensive of them, for some reason. Like he thinks they should be wrapped in cotton wool. With Nelson, she’s not sure she disagrees, but with Lewis…

She wonders about Lewis.

Lewis doesn’t always stay in Columbia, she learns. There’s a cousin, or a second cousin, or a step-cousin once removed, or _something_ that draws her to Hell’s Kitchen sometimes, a few blocks from where Elektra and Matthew had first crossed paths. The cousin works at the District Attorney’s office. Elektra paces around the neighborhood for a week, trying to figure out a schedule. They don’t seem to have one; the cousin comes and goes at all hours, and Lewis seems to drop in at random. _What are you doing, Elektra,_ she thinks one night, watching the lights go on and off. _Too much effort to figure out one person. People aren’t as complicated as this, it was probably nothing._

(But God, she could swear that she’d known that anger, that she’d _known_ it—)

Her stroke of luck comes on a Thursday. They’ve been trying to track a man, her and Matthew—Neal Calderon, a Morningside Heights man in his forties who’s dating a sixteen-year-old from Battery Park. The girl, Sophie, she doesn’t know any better, but Elektra’s run the man’s name. He’s a sex offender, a pedophile. Usually he starts younger. ( _Kill him,_ she thinks, and she really could, there’s nothing stopping her, but _no, no, you don’t go that far, not yet_ —)

(And _not yet_ isn’t the same as _never_ but she’s not quite sure she’s ready to talk about that—)

Regardless. He’s been distressingly social for the past three days, impossible to get to. She’s pissed, and Matthew’s pissed, and she snaps at her chemistry professor when he’s pedantic about her ability to finish their assignment, so when she storms out onto the quad people part in front of her like an ocean. She has no answers. She doesn’t have an answer for why Neal Calderon is a monster, and she doesn’t have answers for why they haven’t been able to hurt him yet, and she doesn’t have answers about Lewis, and she’s truly, deeply sick of not having answers.

She makes a snap decision, and catches a cab to Hell’s Kitchen.

It’s the cousin that opens the door, not Lewis. Of course it’s not Lewis. Classes are ending for the day, and she knows that Lewis is going to be on her way over sooner or later—she’d heard them talking, Lewis and Matthew, overheard a plan to do laundry or have real food or _something_ today—but she’s still not quite prepared for the _who the hell are you_ look from Jennifer Walters. She’s dressed in a sharp suit, and her hair is pinned up at the back of her head. “C-Can I help you?”

“Hi,” says Elektra. She slips into an old skin, one she uses with her father’s coworkers, with the politicians who hold her hand for too long and smile a bit too wide. “I’m Elektra. Is Darcy here?”

( _Darcy_ , and there are shadows lurking under her tongue, _Lewis, Elektra, call her Lewis—_ )

“Not yet, no,” says Walters, and doesn’t relax. She presses her lips together. “Is there something I c-can do for you? Only she didn’t mention someone showing up.”

“I might have mixed up the days,” says Elektra. “Only—only I’m going on a trip with my dad this weekend, and she offered to help me study for a test I have next Tuesday? She’s not in my class, but she knows a lot about it, so like…I don’t know.” She steps back. “I can go and come back, if you want. I’d call her but I put the number into my phone wrong and just—I don’t know.”

Walters wavers. Then she steps aside. “Elektra,” she repeats, and Elektra slips into the apartment. It smells like curry powder. “I have to go to the office. B-But she texted to say she’s on her way. If you w-want to wait, it shouldn’t take her very long.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“If you d-don’t mind cats, then you’ll be fine.” Walters stares at her for a breath longer. Then she shakes her head a little, and steps into her heels. “If she gets back before I do, t-tell her to order from Chang’s.”

“Okay,” says Elektra, still smiling. Walters shuts the door behind her, and locks it. Her footsteps fade away. She could, she thinks, snoop, but that’s pushing a little too far even to her sense of curiosity. Elektra looks into the kitchen, and then decides on the living room, settling in at the desk to wait.

It’s only twenty minutes before she hears a swearword outside, keys jangling in the lock. Lewis doesn’t kick doors like Nelson does, but she doesn’t shut them quietly, either; she whacks them closed like they’ve done something personal. She’s flicking through her phone when she glances into the living room, and stops dead. Her eyes flare wide behind her glasses. In the chair, Elektra crosses her legs at the knee. “Did I frighten you?”

“I don’t remember giving you a key,” Lewis says, slowly. She resettles her fingers against the strap of her messenger bag. “How’d you get into the apartment?”

“Your cousin let me in.” Elektra slips on an old voice, higher, sweeter. “You were just _so_ nice and offered to help me study, I’m sorry I showed up early! Only I don’t have your number.”

“And that’s exceptionally creepy.” She doesn’t look away from Elektra as she dumps her bag onto the end of the couch, toeing off her shoes. Lewis doesn’t seem to have any sort of style other than _layering_ , but at least she’s not mixing stripes with polka-dots. Her hat is a bit offensive, though, rainbow with a fluffy white pompom on the top. She pulls off her fingerless gloves. “So to what do I owe the honor, E?”

Elektra wrinkles her nose a little. “E?”

“You never read the myth of Electra? Her sister was sacrificed by her father, who was killed by her mother, and then she plotted with her brother and her boyfriend to kill her mother in revenge.” She shrugs. “Seems like a hell of a lot of expectations for one person. E’s shorter. Also, less murderous.”

“Most people don’t know that story.”

“Most people also probably think you were named after a Pokémon. I’m special.” She drops down onto the couch with a huff. “So, since, you know, we don’t actually share any classes _at all_ , Miss English Literature, I’m assuming you wanted to talk to me about something. Which, weird, since we’ve spoken like…twice.”

Something knots in her throat. Twice is twice more than she speaks with most people. She’s not quite certain Lewis has figured that out yet. Elektra recrosses her legs, hooking her hair back up out of her face. The streaks in Lewis’s hair are dyed a shade of blue that reminds Elektra of a bowerbird. She shakes that thought out of her head. “You don’t hate me.”

Lewis blinks. “No,” she says, drawing it out slowly. “No, I don’t hate you. Did you think I would?”

“Most people hate me.” Elektra thinks. “Or they’re frightened of me.”

“We’re using the phrase _most people_ a lot and I feel like what we’re both trying to say is _dumb people_. So we could switch it out and not dance around it. If you want.”

There’s a tickling in the back of her throat, almost like she wants to cough. Elektra swallows it back. “Most people hate me. Your friend hates me.”

“Foggy doesn’t hate you. You make him nervous.” Lewis watches Elektra for a moment. “He thinks you’re dangerous.”

She leans back into the chair, staring at the ceiling. There’s a cat in the doorway, white and yellow-eyed. It gives Elektra a filthy look, and then leaps up onto the arm of the couch to curl its tail around its feet, twitching unpredictably. Lewis doesn’t look at it as she drops her hand to the back of its neck, digging her nails into its fur. The cat doesn’t look at her, either.

“Matthew talks about you a lot,” she says, abruptly. Lewis’s mouth tightens.

“We’ve been friends since freshman year, so, yeah, I’m not surprised.”

That’s not anything Matthew’s volunteered, but it would make sense. Elektra tips her head. “Three years, then?”

“You don’t have to do this,” says Lewis. “I’m not Matt’s girlfriend, never have been, never will be.” Her voice scrapes a little, not at Elektra, but at her own throat. She coughs. “Who he dates isn’t really my business. We’re friends. That’s all we’ve ever been. You don’t have to mark your territory or whatever.”

“Not what I’m here for.”

“Then what _are_ you here for?”

She’s not even sure anymore. She’d had some kind of idea, when she’d bullied her way past Jen Walters, of figuring out what the hell it is about Darcy Lewis that keeps tugging her attention, like someone’s yanking a leash. Now she’s skittering in every direction. Lewis is—the closest word to it might be _disarming_ , but that still doesn’t encompass the whole _. Confusing,_ maybe. Elektra licks her lips, and blurts, “Do you think I’m dangerous?”

The cat nips hard at Lewis’s fingers. “Fuck you, Darla,” Lewis snaps, and shoves the cat off the end of the couch. The cat lands without much effort, gives Elektra another filthy look, and then marches off with its puffy, crooked tail flying like a victory flag. Lewis’s forefinger is bleeding. She sticks it into her mouth. “No shit you’re dangerous, E,” she says. “But I don’t think dangerous things are bad like Foggy does.”

“Most bad things are dangerous.”

“Yeah, but a hell of a lot of dangerous things aren’t bad. Tornadoes are only dangerous if you put something in their way. Venomous snakes are dangerous, but that’s only if you piss them off. It’s that sort of thing.”

She’s being compared to tornadoes and serpents. She’s not sure if she’s angry about that, or awed. “You’re splitting hairs.”

Lewis shrugs. “I’m gonna be a lawyer, I should learn to do it now.” She looks at her finger for a moment, watching blood well up. “You’re different from a lot of people, E. I know for sure that’s why Matt likes you. You could probably break Foggy in half with your pinky. He can’t predict what you’re gonna do, and it makes him really uncomfortable. He doesn’t hate you. He just thinks you’re gonna kill him for stepping on your toes.”

She rolls that around in her head. “You don’t seem nervous.”

Lewis gives her a genuinely quizzical look, her eyebrows disappearing under her rainbow cap. She sticks her bleeding finger back into her mouth. “You gonna try to break me in half with your pinky?”

“Not today.”

“Then why the fuck should I be nervous?” She heaves herself up off the couch. “I’m gonna get a Band-Aid. You want anything while I’m in the kitchen?”

“You don’t want me to go?”

“I feel like you’re gonna leave when you wanna leave.” She hesitates, something hitching up around her shoulders. “Besides. I mean. Out of the people Matt’s dated, you’re the first one who hasn’t been, like, super nasty about my existence. It’s nice.”

Elektra stills, her fingers resting light against her knees. There’s a lingering chill hanging just inside her ribcage. “Does he know?”

“Does who know what now?”

“Does Matthew know that they were nasty to you?”

Lewis is caught between blanching and laughing. She settles for a cough. “Christ, no. I mean, when I say _nasty_ it’s more like they never acknowledged that I existed, like, at all, which is different from being overtly gross.” Her eyes flare open wide again, and she frowns at Elektra, pursing her lips. “Don’t look like that.”

She scowls. “Don’t look like what?”

“Like you want to stake someone with a fence post. I’m seriously not bothered by it. I can hold my own.” _Yes,_ Elektra thinks, as that odd tugging comes again and she finally, finally, _finally_ places it. It’s the same sort of _look here, pay attention, think about it_ feeling she’d first had about Matthew. The sense that there’s something here for her to recognize. _I already know you can hold your own._ She files that idea away, and tunes back in. “Besides, I don’t even meet most of Matt’s dates anyway. He likes to keep things separate.” Lewis tips her head. “I’m actually pretty sure you’re the only one I’ve seen more than once.”

Elektra considers that in silence.

“You really don’t get jealous, do you?” Lewis says, and there’s a ribbon of amusement flaring in her half-smile. “Down with women hating women over stupid men?”

The twitching in her throat is a laugh, and she’s not sure what to make of that. “Pettiness isn’t exactly palatable to me.”

“Plus, fuck the patriarchy.”

Elektra inclines her head once, and stops trying to hide her smile. Her father has always told her not to smile like this in front of other people, half a blade— _it makes people uncomfortable when they think you want to eat them alive,_ he’d said—but Lewis doesn’t even bat an eyelid. “Obviously.”

She grins, sudden and bright. “Foggy’s gonna kill me.”

“And you’re happy about that?”

“He always wants to kill me when I make friends with other people. We have a trio, you know?” There’s so much fondness in her voice that it almost seems to cast the air in a different color. Different, Elektra thinks, than the fondness she has for Matthew. But just as powerful, nonetheless. She still hasn’t seen anything in Franklin Nelson to draw that amount of loyalty, from either Lewis or Matthew, but maybe she’s not looking at him the right way. “It’s seriously gonna blow his mind that you’re not jealous of me over Matt. I think you’re the first person who hasn’t been.”

“Jealousy is pointless. If you have cause to be jealous, the person you’re jealous over was never yours in the first place.”

Lewis tips her head the other way. She looks like a curious parrot. Or, Elektra corrects, a housecat with blue fur. The movement’s familiar, and she realizes that Lewis probably picked it up from Matthew. “Possessive would be a better word, then?”

Her voice aches, for some reason. Elektra considers her all over again—barefooted, layered up under heavy sweatshirts and tights, draping herself in fabric to hide herself away—and then stands. She’s in four-inch heels, but out of them she’s fairly sure there would only be a few centimeters difference between her and Darcy Lewis. Elektra steps out of her shoes, and drapes her coat over the back of the desk chair. The odd hitching fades from around Lewis’s shoulders.

“Possessive,” she says. “That works, I suppose.”

“Cool,” says Lewis. “You’re not one of those people who doesn’t eat sugar, like, at all, are you? You don’t seem like one, but all your clothes are designer, so you’re kind of sending me mixed messages here, E. Just so you know, I don’t think I can be seen with you if you don’t eat cookie dough out of the mixing bowl.”

“I work too hard to care about calories,” says Elektra, and it’s true. Whatever she eats is mostly burned away on one of her rooftop nights. “You’re not the one baking them, are you?”

“Christ, has Matt been bitching about my baking stuff _again_?”

She looks so irritated that Elektra almost wants to laugh. “Only a little.”

“That asshole.” Lewis shoves her hands into her hoodie pocket. “Jen makes the batter when she has a test or a case or something that’s pissing her off. I just put them the oven after dumping like…half again as many chocolate chips as we actually need, because she never does.” She glances back at Elektra. “What did you tell Jen I was helping you with?”

She thinks fast. “Cold War political theories.”

“Cool, something I actually know about.”

It’s dark by the time Elektra slinks out of the apartment, and darker when she makes it back to her own. She changes clothes and slips out again, not bothering to tie her hair back, low-heeled shoes and clinging pants that won’t tear when she rolls over concrete. Matthew’s lurking near Columbia, hidden in the shadows of an alley. Eavesdropping, she thinks, on Sophie Valdez. She doesn’t say anything, winds around him for a moment like a cat before slipping out of reach.

“You saw Darcy today,” he says, without turning his face away from the target. Elektra weighs the possible answers for a moment— _lie, but he’d know; truth, but softened; truth, straight_ —and then nods.

“I did.”

She doesn’t elaborate. Matthew shifts, from one foot to the other, slowly. “Everything all right?”

She weighs the answer to that, too. “She made herself sick eating raw cookie dough, but other than that, it was fine.”

Matthew snaps around. His eyebrows have lifted, a little. She’s not sure if he’s just stopped faking serenity around her, or if she’s better at reading his minute expressions than she’s ever been before, but he looks almost hopeful. Hopeful and something else, something bittersweet. “Elektra.”

“Hmmm?”

“Why were you eating cookie dough with Darcy?”

She hums again, smiling a little. “No reason.”

“You never do anything without a reason.” He tips his head, a mirror image. “Especially not things like that.”

He’s not wrong. Neal is about a block away, standing on a corner with a phone to his ear. Sophie hasn’t noticed yet, her head still in a book. Even from this distance, Elektra can see the make-up smearing over her cheek where she’s smudged it. She flares her fingers, as if she’s playing a piano scale. “She’s…different. I suppose.”

Matthew doesn’t say anything. He waits, hands in his pockets. Out on the street, Sophie’s finally noticed her boyfriend. She slides her book back into her bag, gets to her feet to meet him. Elektra wants to drive a needle into the man’s eye socket.

“Different?” he finally says, as Sophie slips her arms around Neal’s waist and hides her face in his chest. It looks like a father-daughter greeting, if it weren’t for the possessive slant to Neal’s hand in Sophie’s hair. Ice cracks apart in her stomach.

“She says my name has too many expectations,” says Elektra.

His lips start twitching, badly. “Really?”

“She keeps calling me E.”

“E,” he repeats. The corners of his mouth curl up. “She calls you E?”

“Does that matter, particularly?”

“She gave you a nickname. Means she likes you.”

She has a lot to think about, today. “I don’t see why.”

“She’s better at reading people than she looks.” He cocks his head the other way, still smiling. “It suits you, E.”

“Come on,” she says. “They’re on the move.”  

.

.

.

“Doesn’t it freak you out?”

Foggy hasn’t stopped watching them since Elektra showed up, looking from his textbooks every other minute to peer at Darcy and E shifting around each other in the kitchen, talking just softly enough that Foggy can’t hear them. Matt hasn’t been actively eavesdropping, but from what he can’t help hearing, Darcy’s actually managed to get Elektra to talk about _Jane Eyre._ Which…well, he’s not going to say it’s impressive, because getting Elektra to talk about anything of substance is fairly impressive, but at the same time Elektra’s very protective of the books she likes. The fact that she’s debating a novel—not just a novel but _Jane Eyre—_ with Darcy is a little bit astounding.

(Elektra had mentioned once, and only once, that she’d been committed to a psychiatric hospital when she was about ten. She’d never explained why, only mentioned it in passing—and her heart had skipped even at that, the slip he’s fairly certain she’d never meant to make—but he thinks _Jane Eyre_ and Bertha Mason might mean much more to her than she’d ever admit aloud. And she’s talking about them, with Darcy, and that’s…

He doesn’t know what that means.)

Matt doesn’t lift his head until Foggy kicks him lightly in the ankle. There’s a hole in the toe of his sock. “Hm?”

“I mean, I know she’s your girlfriend, but like—doesn’t it scare you even a little that she and Darcy hang out sometimes?”

He blinks slowly behind his glasses. “Should it?”

“I’d be scared shitless of Darcy and my girlfriend spending more than a few hours in each other’s company, that’s all.”

There are a hundred reasons why he should worry about Elektra creeping along in Darcy’s footsteps, trying to sort her out. More than a hundred, there are thousands, probably. He’s been so careful to keep these two parts of his life separate—the sun, the shadows—but this…he’s not sure about this. _She’s different, I suppose,_ Elektra had said, and she hadn’t been distasteful or threatened or testing him. She’d been thoughtful, like she was trying to solve a difficult puzzle. He couldn’t stop Elektra if he tried, not when she’s trying to figure something out, but in all honesty, he’s not certain he even wants to. 

( _She’s different,_ Elektra says again, in the back of his head this time. _She’s different._ He wonders what Elektra can see that Matt hasn’t noticed, what she’s realized that he hasn’t picked up. For someone who’s never given a damn what other people think of her, Elektra’s the best reader of humanity he’s ever met, including Stick. He can’t help being at least a little curious.)

“It doesn’t,” Matt says finally. Foggy lets out a breath through his nose, exasperated, and highlights a whole paragraph in his casebook.

“Your funeral.”

“Matt, your girlfriend’s mean,” Darcy says from the kitchen, pitched loud enough that they can hear. “She keeps telling me I’m wrong about Bertha Mason and it’s _mean_.”

“Yeah, no,” he says. He thinks they can all tell he’s trying not to laugh. “That’s one argument I’m staying far away from.”

Darcy makes an irritated little sound, and slips out of the kitchen to put her hand to the back of his neck, dig in with her nails just enough that the hair on his arms stands on end. She shakes him a little. “You,” she says. “You’re a fucking traitor, Mattster.”

“I’m calling it self-preservation.”

“Wise,” says Elektra, as she sits down on his left.

Foggy’s eyes flick from one of them to the next. He keeps his mouth shut.

.

.

.

_She gave you a nickname. Means she likes you._

It’s evidence, really. Normal people don’t _like_ Elektra. Normal people are scared of Elektra. Normal people can sense how dangerous she is—because Lewis is right, she _is_ dangerous, as dangerous as a cobra or a scorpion, and Elektra likes being that way more than anything in the world. Normal people are like Nelson, and avoid her as best they can out of instinct.

If Lewis were normal, she’d run scared every time Elektra turned up on her doorstep, whether it’s Hell’s Kitchen or Columbia. But she doesn’t. She steps aside. She steps aside, gives Elektra her back, lets her in and never shows a single flicker of fear. Each time she does it, Elektra gets more and more confused. Elektra doesn’t like being confused. Being confused means she hasn’t understood something yet, and she _loathes_ not understanding things right off the bat. She’s about as far from stupid as you can get, and she knows it, and not understanding things makes her uncomfortable.

Matthew doesn’t mention it again, not really. She’d never considered that he would. Lewis was right when she’d said that Matthew keeps certain parts of his life away from others. Lewis and Nelson, they’re on the daylight side. The mask, that’s the night. Elektra stands between the two, a part of and separate from either, from both. The only reason she knows he thinks about it at all is that sometimes slips and calls her E, and it makes her wonder if he knows that she keeps showing up at Lewis’s door when she has nothing else to do. (That’s a lie: sometimes she has a great many things to do, but she shows up anyway because maybe this time she’ll figure it out, _maybe_ —) He has to know, he should be able to smell it on her—on Lewis too, come to think of it—but he never says a word about it.

He never asks her to stop, either, which is tacit permission. Whether it’s bothering him or not, he doesn’t say a word. So Elektra keeps on snooping, and waits for the other shoe to drop.

“She doesn’t know, does she,” says Elektra at one point, when it’s a quieter night, a softer sense to the way he’s touching her, fingers tracing patterns over her bare waist. She never lies on him, not really, but she’s next to him, and her hair’s spread over the pillow, and that’s enough, she thinks. “Neither of them do.”

Matthew, who’s preoccupied with whatever pattern he’s making on her skin (he’s careful to do it in cycles of three, and it makes her throat hurt in a way she can’t describe, that he’s noticed her pattern and adopted it without even asking), hums. “They don’t know what?”

He doesn’t ask who _they_ are. There’s only ever one _they_ when it comes to Matthew Murdock. There’s a _they_ and a _them_ and a _her,_ and that’s about it. She only has a _him._

“About you.”

Matthew doesn’t stiffen or twitch or do anything other than come to an abrupt stop, halfway through the third stroke. His eyebrows snap together. “No,” he says, slowly. “I told you. You’re the only one who knows.”

She considers that. Elektra shifts, rolls onto her side, propping her chin in one hand. His fingers shift against her skin, settle on her hip. If he’s not letting go, she reasons, she hasn’t offended him yet. “Have you ever thought about telling them? Either of them.”

He’s quiet. She sits, and waits, until finally he says, “Of course I’ve thought about it.”

“And you didn’t.”

“You haven’t told anyone either.” He closes his eyes. “What you do.”

“I never had anyone to tell.”

He listens to her for a moment. Matthew starts the pattern of three again, over the bone of her hip. Three circles, pause. Three circles, pause.

“Do you think they’d hate you?” she asks, curiously. “Or do you think that they wouldn’t understand it?”

He sighs, and it tickles across her breastbone. His mouth curves down. “I don’t want to talk about this, Elektra. You know why I can’t.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Finally, Matthew draws his hand away, and she knows she’s hit a nerve. “Why the hell are you even asking about this?”

“Because I want to know. Isn’t that enough?”

“Not with this, it isn’t,” he snaps, and Elektra lets that hit her full force. This isn’t something she’s used to, words being able to cut. She’s never let anyone’s words cut before. Now she’s bleeding, and she doesn’t know how to stop it. She watches him through her eyelashes, just for a moment. Then she sits up, and slips out of the bed, snagging her dress from the floor and pulling it back on. Matthew listens to her do it, sitting curled, one knee raised. She thinks he might ask her where she’s going, but he doesn’t. He just listens, and when she slams the front door behind her, it rattles in her bones all the way back across town.

She’s not entirely sure how Lewis figures out that she and Matthew had a fight, or if she even had to figure anything out at all. Elektra doesn’t know how Lewis learned her address, either, but three days later there’s a knock on her apartment door, and the damn rainbow hat with pompoms is waiting on the other side. Elektra doesn’t say anything, just opens the door and looks at Lewis without blinking.

“Hi,” she says. She lifts one shoulder. “So, uh. I promise I’ll explain what I’m doing here. But can I come in first? I feel like my shoes are gonna stain the carpets, is all.”

Her glasses are slipping down her nose, and there are raindrops on the lenses. Elektra steps to the side without a word, suddenly conscious of the fact that her apartment is a wreck. Her father keeps trying to hire cleaners for her, but she’s usually all right with keeping things in their proper places, and she can never tell if hired cleaners do things the way she wants them done, anyway. Now she’s been here for almost three days straight, and she hasn’t bothered doing the dishes yet. Lewis doesn’t seem to notice. She toes off her shoes in the foyer, and dumps her backpack onto the couch.

“I’m not here to yell at you,” she says, in a very mild voice that makes Elektra exceptionally uncomfortable. “Before you jump to conclusions or anything.”

She folds her cardigan tight over her chest. Her toenail polish is chipped, which she should fix. “What the hell are you doing here, then?”

“I figured if Matt was in major depressive mode, then you probably weren’t doing much better,” Lewis says. She drops down onto the couch after her backpack. “Matt has Foggy trying to get him drunk right now, but I was pretty sure you don’t have a Foggy, so I thought, you know. I’d come see how you were doing. If you needed someone to see.”

Elektra absorbs that, for a moment. She’s not sure what she’s supposed to say. She licks her lips. “What’s in the backpack?”

“Secrets.” Lewis props her hands on her hips. “Do you want me to go?”

 _No_. It catches on her tongue, halfway out her mouth. Elektra bites it down, swallows it back. “I thought you’d be with Matthew for this.”

“I love Matt,” says Lewis, simply. Elektra waits for that to cut her, too, but it doesn’t. It’s just a statement of fact. “He’s my best friend, and I love him, and I’ll probably love him until I’m dead and my hair’s falling out of my skull. But he’s also literally _the_ most Catholic person I’ve ever met in my life, and if he’s doing the long-face thing, then it means he’s fucked up, and he doesn’t know how to apologize. Which also means you probably have had a shit few days. Unless, of course, the fact that you seem to be nesting is some kind of celebration of newfound singledom.” She pauses. “And just—I don’t know. Thought you could use a friend.”

Elektra doesn’t know what to say to that. She opens her mouth, and shuts it again. “We’re friends?”

Lewis’s face shutters. She swallows a few times. “You tell me, Elektra.”

 _That_ stings. Something aches at the hollow of her throat and she doesn’t even know what started it. Elektra folds her hands together, pulls them apart again.

“You want me to go?” Lewis says.

She works spit back into her mouth. “No, it’s—” She gropes for words, but all she can think is _stay._ Which is needy and ridiculous, because she barely knows Lewis, and she probably only came because Matthew was having a hard time anyway. But she looks genuinely hurt, Elektra thinks, as Lewis stares at her. Like Elektra’s reached inside her and crushed something. And that’s—she really does not like being the person who caused that expression. She can’t speak, so instead she crosses the room and sits down on the couch on the other side of Lewis’s backpack, pulling it around so she can get at the zipper. “Show me what’s in here.”

Lewis unwinds. Before Elektra can yank the bag open, she’s pulled it back, and set it on the floor beside her feet. “No. I told you, it’s full of secrets.”

 “It’s a backpack.”

“You have no sense of mystery,” she says. Her eyes are a little red, but she smiles again, and that’s a completely different kind of ache. “Speaking of mystery, why the fuck are you nesting, anyway? You struck me as the _stalk the town, beat the shit out of a punching bag_ kind of sad person.”

She is, usually. She just has no idea if she’d run into Matthew doing it. So she’s spent the past three nights locked inside, and every muscle in her body is itching to move. But she can’t say any of that. “I’m not nesting.”

“This seriously looks like you’re nesting, E. I think there’s like six blankets on this couch.”

“I was cold.”

Lewis politely does not look at the thermostat. Instead, she unzips her bag, and yanks out a knitted rainbow blanket that’s lumpy on one side, letting it drop to the floor. A box of cigarettes falls out with it, and she stuffs it back into the backpack. “That is not a secret,” she says, before Elektra can say anything. “That is a habit brought on by bad finals in sophomore year.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“You were staring at it.”

“I wasn’t,” Elektra says, but the corner of her mouth is twitching. “How could I stare at it? It was on the floor for five seconds.”

“You were staring at my bad habit and making judgments about it when I came to be nice to you in your hour of need, and that’s cruel and unusual and completely unnecessary.” She heaves her laptop out next, and sets it on the coffee table. “I have like…dozens of bootleg movies on that, don’t tell, shhh. And, I dunno, I brought food. Which is silly, because you live in a fucking penthouse and probably order in a lot, but…I don’t know. I brought food.”

Her voice is gone again. Lewis is fiddling with the computer and cursing at the broken space bar on her keyboard when Elektra finally clears her throat, and says, “Does it need to go in the fridge?”

“The computer?”

“The food.”

“Nah, should be fine.” She puts the bag back on the floor. “I wasn’t sure if you needed it so I didn’t grab anything like that.”

“Oh.”

“Seriously, you look like you’re waiting for me to explode. Chill, woman. I swear I’m not flammable.” Lewis cocks her head. “People don’t do this for you very much, do they?”

“Do what?”

She laughs a little. “Jesus. Like—come over when it’s been a shit few days. Or check on you when you’re sick. Do you not have people who do that? I figured you would.”

Elektra shrugs, because there’s no other way to answer that question. “It’s not as if I have no one to worry about me.”

Lewis looks around the empty room, pointedly, and then says, “So, you want international or US?”

“International or US what?”

“Movies. International or US?”

They eventually end up going with a South Korean movie called _Ajusshi_ , which has very strange fight choreography. Elektra doesn’t say a word for the first hour or so, but Lewis keeps up a running commentary that drags answers out of her. (She also flings the blanket over her legs, draping the other half over Elektra even though there are actually six blankets on this couch, and Elektra doesn’t shove it off. It smells like cat and coffee and like a shampoo she doesn’t recognize, but she doesn’t shove it off.) The movie ends, Elektra slinks out from underneath the blanket (she’s not cold, exactly, when she leaves, but her skin prickles with goosebumps anyway) and goes to get coffee from the kitchen. When she comes back, Lewis has rested her elbow on the arm of the couch, curling into the side.

“You don’t sit still ever, do you?”

“What?”

“You’re pacing.”

She hadn’t even noticed. Flustered for some reason, she says, “I don’t know. I never think about it.”

“Usually that means the answer’s yes.” Lewis hooks her chin over the couch pillow. “Sitting in here isn’t helping you.”

She shrugs again. “I don’t—I’m not good at sitting down.” The words leave an odd, heavy taste behind on her tongue. Like she’s telling a secret. “Usually I run. Or spar. Or do parkour.”

“You do parkour?” Lewis’s eyelashes flicker. “Holy shit. Wait, when you say parkour, do you mean _parkour_ parkour? As in like, _Assassin’s Creed_ free-running parkour?”

“If you actually tried to catch yourself on a building with your fingertips you’d snap all the tendons in your arms. And fall. And die.”

“That’s beside the point. When you say parkour, that’s what you mean, right?”

It doesn’t seem like something that’s difficult to understand. Elektra wraps her hands closer around her mug of coffee. “…yes?”

“Goddamn, girl. Can I see? Not right now, obvs, it’s way too icy outside and I don’t want you to break your neck or something—”

She’d have to work very hard to break her neck at this point, but there’s a warm spot settling underneath her breastbone at the look on Lewis’s face. “Later.”

“Cool,” says Lewis happily, and makes grabby hands at Elektra’s mug. “That smells really good, is there more?”

“In the kitchen.”

Lewis clambers over the back of the sofa, and goes to borrow a mug. “Matt says you do krav maga?”

“Among other things.”

Lewis digests it for a moment, pouring the coffee, rummaging around in the fridge for creamer. It’s only once the coffee’s been tinkered with to her specifications that she turns back to Elektra, her mouth twisting. “Of the two options, which will make me hate myself more?”

“What?”

“Krav maga. Or running. Which is worse?”

She almost says krav maga, because broadly speaking, yes, krav maga is much more brutal than running. Then she remembers that this is Lewis, how much Lewis has complained about jogging, the size of her breasts, and the combination of the two. She changes her mind. “Running. Probably. It’s harder when it’s cold.”

“Fine.” She lifts her mug. “Let me finish this and then we can go find a gym. You can teach me how to die with some minor grace, and maybe when you’re done you won’t look like you’re going to gnaw your own arms off.”

“I don’t look like that.”

“I saw this show on the Discovery Channel once about a fox chewing its leg off to get out of a trap,” says Lewis. “You look exactly like that. And I feel like you need both your arms to do parkour properly, so the less chewing, the better.”

.

.

.

It would surprise literally no one on the planet to discover that Elektra Natchios has a membership at an expensive-ass fortieth-floor gym on the Upper East Side. Darcy bounces her leg against the door of the taxi as it pulls to a stop, opens her mouth to argue about Elektra paying the cabbie and shuts it again when E gives her a very dark look. She’s all cheekbones, Darcy thinks, dark skin and bright eyes and sharp bones. Like a falcon, maybe, even if she moves like a snake.

(“Seriously,” Foggy had said, a few days after Elektra had shown up at Darcy’s Starbucks and tipped her head and asked so carefully about the alley. “Doesn’t she scare you?”

Darcy blinks a few times. “She scares you?”

“She looks at people like she wants to eat them.”

And sure, if Foggy describes it that way, sometimes Elektra looks like she wants to eat people. She’d thought of it more like…evaluation, like she’d been trying to sort people into boxes, but maybe that was just Darcy. She shrugs a little. “Matt wouldn’t like her if she were a sociopath, Foggy, you know that.”

“Sometimes I wonder with Matt,” Foggy says. Darcy shakes her head.

“I like her. She’s different, y’know? Doesn’t make her bad.”

Foggy had given her the oddest look, then. “You and Matt are too similar sometimes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just—” he makes an impatient sound. “Both of you like poisonous things and then you get surprised when they bite, that’s all.”

“E’s a person, not a rattlesnake.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Foggy had said, and then changed the subject. The image has stuck in her head, though. Curving fangs and danger underfoot. She’s not sure it’s not accurate. Still, there’s a sense she can’t explain that yeah, Elektra’s dangerous, but—but she’s not _bad_ dangerous. She’s just dangerous. She tries to explain it to Foggy, but he just shakes his head and changes the subject.)

“They’re not exactly going to let me in,” Darcy says, when the doorman waves them over to the elevators. Elektra rocks on her feet, and then smiles a little, the same half-blade from when she’d snuck into Jen’s apartment. (Darcy should be more worried about that than she is, she thinks. It’s partially why she hasn’t told Foggy. She’s pretty sure it was some kind of test, and the fact that she hadn’t freaked out means that she’s passed. Or something like that.)

“They don’t argue with me. Besides, if you act like you belong there, you’ll belong.”

“E, I’m in yoga pants and a torn T-shirt. And a million sports bras.”

“So are half the people in there.” She lifts her eyebrows. “Backing out now, Lewis?”

“Why do you call me Lewis?”

“Why do you call me E?”

Darcy bites the inside of her cheek. “Point.”

Elekra’s smile gets wider. “Besides. It reminds me too much of Jane Austen.”

“Well.” She bounces on the balls of her feet. “I mean. Homegirl had good lines.”

“Such as?”

Darcy lifts her hands like the scales of Justice, tipping from one side and then to the other. “ _There is a stubbornness about me that can never bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me._ ” She lowers her hands. “You can’t tell me that’s not a great way to say _fuck you, asshat, you don’t scare me at all._ ”

There’s a moment when she thinks Elektra might be too shocked to say anything. Then she smiles, not a knifey smirk but an actual smile, bright enough to sting. “ _I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,_ ” she says, “ _of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done._ ”

Darcy grumbles under her breath. “You don’t have to show off.”

Elektra makes a cracking sound in the back of her throat that Darcy’s pretty sure is a laugh, and leads the way out of the elevator.

She’s not exactly wrong, about the yoga pants and T-shirt thing. Most of these people are wearing T-shirts that are tailored to fit them, instead of baggy in the shoulders and torn at the seams, but they sweat like normal people. There’s a blonde woman at one of the nearby bags who’s just in a sport bra and booty shorts, and Darcy relaxes a little when no one gives her a second glance. E strips her jacket off, leaves it on a nearby bench. “Patricia.”

“Elektra,” says the blonde woman, and hits the bag hard enough to make the chain shake. She dances back from it, and wipes sweat from her eyelashes. “You haven’t been here in a while.”

“I was working.”

“Bad habits, Natchios.” She has very blue eyes, Darcy thinks. The woman named Patricia sticks out her hand. “Trish Walker.”

“Darcy Lewis,” Darcy says. The name’s ringing a bell, but at the moment, she can’t think why. There are knots of calluses on Trish’s palm. E makes a little face. The snakiness has slipped away into shadow, burbling beneath the surface.

“Trish sounds like an onomatopoeia.”

“And Natchios sounds like nachos,” says Trish. She looks between Darcy and Elektra, and then slings a towel over her shoulder, eyeing the sleet hitting the wide windows. “You picked a day to come in, though. Storm’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“Don’t they always?” says Elektra, and Trish snorts.

“Don’t I know it.” She picks at the bandages around her hands. The gesture’s familiar too. It clicks in the back of her head when Trish looks up, and she realizes— _shit._ She knows the face. Older, now, and less made-up, but she definitely knows the face. “Nice to meet you, Darcy.”

“Nice to meet you,” Darcy says, and waits until Trish wanders off before seizing Elektra by the elbow. “ _You go to the same gym as Patsy_?”

E makes an odd face. “Patsy?”

“I’m making you watch that show.” She glances after Trish Walker again (she’s talking to one of the men near the door, a pained look on her face) and then says, “Or not. She probably hates hearing about it. Anyway—should I just like…wait somewhere, or what?”

“No,” says Elektra. “Come on. If you want to work on learning self-defense, you need a little more space than just a few feet.”

They end up having to wait while a few guys finish off with the mats. Elektra wraps her hands (for the first time Darcy realizes that Elektra’s knuckles are beat to shit, bruised and scabbed and mottled with color; she wonders how often Elektra comes to this gym, how many hours she’s spent at bags and in matches) and then sets her up. “You know how to punch, at least,” she says, fiddling with Darcy’s fingers, resettling her fist. “And you’re smart enough not to put your thumb on the inside. But if you come at every person you fight the way you did with the man in the alley you’re going to end up eating dirt.”

“It’s not like I was planning on going after Shitty Michael again.”

Elektra cuts her a look through her eyelashes. She has very dark eyes. “So it was a spur of the moment decision to attack a man half again your size?”

“You telling me you wouldn’t have?”

Elektra considers that. Her lips twitch a little, like she’s trying not to smile. “I would have,” she says, “but people have told me that my example is not one to emulate.”

“I’m not a lemming. I make my own decisions.”

“Clearly.” Elektra finishes with Darcy’s right hand, settling the bandage into place. She takes the other. It feels odd to close her fingers into a fist when half of them are swathed in cloth. “Generally we use these for boxing, but you may as well get used to them. Besides, your hand’s already bruised.”

“So are yours.” Darcy blinks. “I thought Trish said you hadn’t come here in a while.”

“I have a bag in my apartment.” Elektra drops her hand. “Come on. We’ll start with the basics.”

 _The basics_ apparently means a range of punches and kicks that make her feel a little silly, whacking at the air and having Elektra correct how she leaves her feet. She’d been right, though, to get Elektra out of the apartment. The longer she’s here, the less pinched she looks, as if something’s draining out of her. “By the time you study this for a few months, you’ll be able to break spines,” says Elektra, and it comes out sounding oddly positive, like, _Look at this neat thing you’ll be able to hurt people with._ Darcy watches her for a second, and then looks down at her hands. She thinks of Shitty Michael, of the _rage_ , the coiling viper at the base of her tongue when she’d heard the way Zeke had said _please_.

“I know some people I’d want to use that on, if I could.”

E’s head snaps up. She watches Darcy with her lips parted, eyes narrowing a little, flicking over Darcy’s face. She has the sense that Elektra’s looking for something. It only lasts a breath, though. “Don’t do it unless you mean it,” she says, finally, and then goes back to having her practice kicking nothing.  

When Darcy takes a break, Elektra takes to the bars. _A gymnast_ , Darcy thinks. It’s terrifying to watch Elektra let go, trust her palms to the bar and her weight to the air. Still, there’s also something exhilarating about it. _Gymnastics and martial arts._ No wonder Elektra looks like she could beat someone into the ground with her pinky.

 _We’re friends?_ she’d said. It’d been a question. Darcy’s first instinct had been to run, to bolt, because Christ, she hadn’t been expecting it to be that blunt. She knows Elektra, a little—well, as much as a month’s acquaintance can let her know anyone—and she _knows_ that Elektra is blunt, but it’d still whacked her like a hammer to the heart, hard and fast. Now that she thinks about it, though, the look on Elektra’s face—it’d only been there for a second, hidden away fast, but there had been more confusion there than there had been shock.

_Has she never had a friend before?_

It’s an impossible idea—well, not entirely impossible, since the last friend Darcy had had before Jen, Matt, and Foggy had been a girl in the third grade. But at the same time, girls like Elektra didn’t not have friends. They just _didn’t_. Not terrifyingly well put-together, on top of their lives, gorgeous people like Elektra. But it keeps sticking in her throat, the question. _Have you never had a friend before?_

_It’s not as if I have no one to worry about me._

She wonders.

“We should food,” says Darcy, as soon as Elektra makes her way off the bars. She’s relaxed, now. The tension’s gone, or mostly gone. She blinks at Darcy a few times, a cat with a flashlight in its eyes, before her mouth goes crooked.

“Grammatically, that was atrocious.”

“Fuck you, E,” says Darcy, and gets up off the bench. “The English language is a monstrosity that constantly evolves, which means, grammatically, I can do whatever the hell I want with it.”

“Not without being deeply offensive to anyone with a basic grasp of linguistics.”

“I’m feeling judged,” she says. “Come on. Food. Food calls to us.”

“I’m not sure food has a voice.”

“Christ, you do that thing Matt does where you sass me when I’m being charming.” She weighs it, the idea, and then she nudges her elbow into Elektra’s side. Elektra rocks away from her, startled, and then sways back just as fast to whack Darcy in the arm. “That’s a terrible habit for you to pick up from him. Don’t do that.”

“Who says I picked it up from him?”

“Don’t tell me there are two of you. That’s not okay, I’m not on board with that. I get one friend to be sassy with without being mocked openly.”

The odd, hunted look flicks across Elektra’s face again. She squashes it even faster this time. “I don’t know if I should apologize or laugh at you.”

“You buy me food as a goddamn apology for your backtalk, that’s what you do,” says Darcy, and Elektra cracks in the back of her throat.

.

.

.

She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised when they step out of the elevator onto her floor to find Matthew standing by the doorframe. Lewis goes a bit still, choking her voice off like she’s strangling a cat, but Elektra…no. Elektra’s not surprised. She’s maybe a little irritated, because she’s been expecting this for three days with no response, but she’s not surprised. “Matt.” Lewis glances at Elektra, whip-fast, and then steps away from her. “Hey, I thought you were with Foggy.”

Matthew’s blinking very quickly, like he’s trying to process everything. Elektra doesn’t say a word. He can work it out on his own, she thinks. There’s more than enough evidence here for him to figure out what was going on without her saying a damn word. “I just—hi.”

Lewis looks from Matthew to Elektra and back again. She sucks her teeth. “This is awkward made of awkward,” she says. “You mind if I get my crap out of your apartment, E? I can scoot, then.”

Elektra bites her lip. “No, that’s—of course.”

Matthew gets out of her way when she goes to unlock the door. It’s a bit too sinuous for him to be hiding everything right now. She thinks he’s too startled to remember. Lewis doesn’t notice. She heaves all the hair off the back of her neck, damp with rainwater on the top, and piles it up at the back of her head. “Sorry, I’ll just, um. I’ll get out of the way.”

“You don’t have to,” Matthew says. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I can—I’ll go.”

“Don’t you dare,” says Lewis, with a bite to her voice like a cat. “I’m the one intruding.”

“Darcy—”

“Don’t argue with me.”

To Elektra’s very great surprise, Matthew shuts up. He looks torn about it, but he shuts his mouth and tucks his chin in close to his chest and waits, patiently, for Lewis to collect all her things off of Elektra’s couch. She pulls her sweatshirt on last, tugging her hair out from underneath the collar as Elektra perches on the arm of the couch. Lewis glances once at Matt, and then tips her head at Elektra.

“I’m leaving you the food, okay?”

“All right,” Elektra says, and gets up to make coffee. She needs something to do with her hands. Lewis watches her do it, and lets out a breath through her nose before seizing Matthew by the arm, and dragging him in. Elektra’s hearing isn’t anything on Matthew’s, for obvious reasons, but it’s sharper than she lets on, so even over the burble of the espresso machine, she can still catch every word.

“What are you doing here?”

“Being a friend.” Lewis winds her arms across her chest, tight as a clock spring. “If you’re here then I’m guessing Foggy’s idea to hit up Josie’s went ass-backwards. Which, considering it’s barely seven pm on a Saturday, doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Matthew waves that off. “Darcy—”

“Don’t give me that face,” Lewis says, and Matthew shuts up again. “Seriously, you don’t need to freak out. You’re my best friend, okay, but I’m her friend too, and I figured she shouldn’t be alone any more than you should be. Besides, I asked if you wanted me to stay, and you said no.” She stops. “I’d have come out here anyway even if you’d said yes, because like—I don’t know, lots of reasons. But don’t act all confused when you already knew E and I were friends.”

“I’m not confused.”

“You _look_ confused. Also kind of terrified, which, FYI? You don’t have to be. I didn’t ask her about it.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“Liar,” Lewis says, smiling. “You suck at lying, you really do. But realtalk, it’s none of my business what you two fought about. I just came over so she could beat me up a little.”

His eyebrows snap together. Elektra hits the button on her coffee machine, and watches them as it drains into the mug. “I don’t—”

“Krav maga hurts,” Lewis says. “It’s fun. But it hurts.” She hesitates. “I know it’s not my business, any of this. I said that. But I like her. She’s a good person and I like her, so whatever happened, you need to fix it. Okay? Just—just fix it.”

Matthew doesn’t say anything. Elektra knows that look on his face, though, the way he’s suddenly hunching, desperate and quiet. He curves closer to her, slipping into Lewis’s space, and Elektra thinks, _Oh._ She’s not entirely sure what she’s feeling, but there’s something there, and it’s swallowing her whole. Lewis’s mouth crooks; she catches Matthew’s hands, bruised as they are, and squeezes them once before she crosses back to collect her things. Elektra creeps close, just for a moment, as Lewis grabs her backpack.

“Don’t kill him too badly,” she says. “I need him to pass my classes next semester.”

Elektra can’t meet her eyes. Lewis glances back at Matthew, just once, before she touches her fingers to Elektra’s elbow. When Elektra doesn’t pull away (normal people don’t touch her, normal people don’t dare, but Lewis _isn’t_ normal, she isn’t normal and Elektra doesn’t mind her invading her space and she still can’t work out why) Lewis steps close, and knots her arms around Elektra’s ribs. Elektra freezes, hands away from her sides, not entirely sure what to do. She’s warm, Lewis, but her fingers are startlingly cold. Before Elektra can make a decision (yank back, lean closer) Lewis has let her go, and backed off. “Tell me the next time you go to that gym, okay? I kind of want to keep learning, if you’re okay with dealing with my baby flailing.”

Her throat’s dry as bone. Elektra swallows a few times. “I—all right.”

For some reason, Lewis looks amused. “You _are_ actually gonna tell me, you’re not just saying that. Right? You’ll actually text me or whatever? I’ll be mad if you don’t.”

“I don’t think I have—” She stops just short of saying it aloud, because she feels like she’s in secondary and it’s awful and juvenile and weird. Lewis thankfully picks up the hint. Her eyes crinkle.

“I’ll get it from Matt, if that’s kosher. I should go, anyway.” She stops in the doorway to look back at them, just for a moment, her eyes shadowed. Then she snaps Elektra a salute. “Good sailing, soldiers,” she says, and then she shuts the door behind her. Elektra doesn’t say anything. She stares at him, silent.

“She likes you,” Matthew says. “I told you she did.”

“I don’t know why.”

“She has good taste.”

Elektra presses her lips together, and says nothing.

“You didn’t tell her,” he says.

Elektra shakes her head. “Of course I didn’t. Don’t be an asshole.”

He winces. Still, the edge of his mouth quirks. “I deserved that.”

“Yes, you did.” She perches on the edge of her barstool, and waits. “Why are you here, Matthew?”

He’s quiet for a moment, standing in the middle of her dirty living room with his head tipped. Matthew takes off his glasses, tucks them into the pocket of his coat. He looks a bit like a crow, standing there, ready to move, the fabric of his peacoat hanging wide on both sides. “To apologize,” he says, finally. “I was a jackass.”

“Yes, you were.”

He rubs his thumb over the dents left behind by his glasses. “Shit. Just—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—I was shitty, and I shouldn’t have been. You asked a question, and it’s—I’m not good at this.”

“Good at what?”

“Talking.” Matthew pushes his thumb hard into his forehead, and then drops his hand. “I’m not good at talking. Just—some questions are—I don’t know.”

She slips off the stool. Elektra glances at the doorway, thinks about how Lewis had looked back when Matthew wasn’t paying attention, how she’d had the oddest expression, as if she’d just taken a step and the floor had fallen away underneath her. “You never answered it,” she says. “My question.”

Matthew’s quiet for a long time. He runs his hands over his face, digs his nails into the knots at the base of his neck. “I don’t know,” he says again. “I just—God.”

Elektra waits until he’s pressed his fingers so hard into his neck that he’s probably going to leave marks behind before she reaches out, and touches the sleeve of his coat. He lets out a sharp breath, and drops his hands to his sides again. “They’d leave,” he says, low and harsh and hoarse. “Because—I don’t know. If they knew. They’re not—they’d leave. They’re better than I am, and if I told them, they’d—they’d know to stay away from me.”

“Why?”

“ _Why_?” Matthew says, and he laughs. It comes out too high-pitched, too bladed. “I’m not good enough for them. Not—there’s a monster in me and I can’t get it out, and if they ever see that—”

“There’s nothing wrong with what you are.”

“Elektra—”

“There is _nothing wrong with what you are_ ,” she says in a hiss, and grabs a fistful of his coat. “We are what we were born and what we’ve been made to be. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Elektra—”

“You are _not_ a monster.” Elektra shakes him once. “Do you understand me? You’re not a monster. This thing, this—what you think is a devil, Matthew, that’s in all of us. You’re honest with it. _We’re_ honest with it. Which means there is _nothing_ _wrong with you_. If they’re not capable of understanding that, that’s their problem.”

For a minute, all he can do is breathe. “That’s not what I—I can’t lose them, E.”

“You don’t know that you will.”

“I know them better than you do, I know what they would say, and Elektra, E, I can’t—if they go—”

“Stop,” she says, and he does. “Just—stop. Stop.”

Matthew takes a breath, his lungs heaving. Then another. When Elektra leans forward, resting her head to his chest, he winds himself so close that she can barely breathe for the power of it. She doesn’t open her eyes.  

“You don’t know that you will.” She doesn’t know what else to say. She doesn’t know how to fix things, not like this. She doesn’t know how to talk to people to make them think they’re worth something. Maybe Lewis might, but she doesn’t have a damn clue. “You can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can.”

“You could be wrong.”

“I’m not.”

 _This is why I don’t have friends,_ she thinks. Messy and ridiculous, handling a knife by the blade. When she opens her eyes, she sees the rainbow beanie with the pompom on it that Lewis forgot on her coffee table, and nausea hits her hard in the gut. _Shit._

_I know some people I’d want to use that on, if I could._

_I think Lewis might be like us_ , she says, or nearly says. _Matthew, I think Lewis could be like us if she wanted to. I think she’s honest, too._ But no, not now. That’s not something she can say, now. Elektra digs her nails into his scalp instead, hard enough to sting, and holds on.

“I don’t like that you can hurt me,” she says into his coat. He smells like ice.

He strokes his thumb over the back of her shoulder blade, one, two, three. Then he pauses, and does it again. And again, three sets of three. “Didn’t feel too great on this side.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she says, and it’s not a request. She tips her head back and he bends down and then she’s kissing him, she’s pushed him against the wall in a way that doesn’t even come close to gentle because that’s not in her, gentleness, but it’s all she can do. There’s nothing else left.

_Don’t hurt me again._

.

.

.

The realization lingers. She prods at it a few times over the next few weeks, touching it, darting away, and then returning. _Matthew has feelings for Lewis._ Or, alternatively, _Lewis has feelings for Matthew._ Or, again, in another form: _they have feelings for each other._ Unacknowledged, probably. Unspoken. She’s fairly certain they wouldn’t still be getting along as easily as they do if either of them had said something, and for a while she doubts it, her own observations, her own eyes. Still, the longer she spends with the idea, the more she thinks she’s right, that she hasn’t misjudged it. _They have feelings for each other, and neither of them have said a word._

She’s not sure what to make of that. So Elektra does what she always does, when she’s not sure. She researches. She doesn’t spend too much time with them together, not really—she goes to the gym with Lewis three or more times a week, dragging her out of her apartment or the dorm room she shares with a girl named Lindsay, and she spends all her nights with Matthew, in or out—but she doesn’t avoid them. She listens, and she watches, and she thinks.

_Jealousy is pointless. If you have cause to be jealous, the person you’re jealous over was never yours in the first place._

She’s not _not_ jealous. She doesn’t know what she is. She brushes her fingers over the aching places in her head, and she can’t find jealousy in there, not exactly. Because she knows—she _knows_ Matthew’s hers, blood and bone. She knows it because she can see it, in his face, in his hands and how his mouth moves. She knows more of the whole of Matthew Murdock than anyone living, and she _knows_ he’s hers. ( _What does that mean for you,_ a voice whispers, _does that mean you’re his in turn, is that what you’re saying, Elektra_ , and it sounds too much like her father for her to listen for very long, but God, there’s a sense of careful _right_ to the words that she can barely stand to look at, because _I belong to no one_ —)

So no, she thinks. She’s not jealous. She’s not _not_ jealous, but she’s not jealous. She’s curious, the same way she always is when she comes across something she can’t make out at first glance. (And she hadn’t seen it at first glance, she’s so much better than other people at noticing things and she hadn’t _seen it_ , and that more than anything absolutely infuriates her, because she should have worked it out in an instant, shouldn’t be sorting through hindsight and thinking, _ah, now that makes sense_ —) She’s curious, she wants to understand it, she _needs_ to understand it so she can settle herself back into whatever rhythm they’d had, the three of them, and if she doesn’t work out some way to balance all the questions soon she’s going to start yanking her hair out in clumps.

(But Christ, it _hadn’t_ been obvious, not until she’d known them better, because they’re both so good at hiding things when they want to. As careful as Matthew can be, as distracting as Lewis makes herself, there’s—there’s something there. An unspoken word. An echo of an unasked question. It’s in how Lewis will sometimes put her hand on Matthew’s hair, tip his head gently back and forth as she talks. It’s in the odd knotting around his mouth when Lewis bumps into him, like he’s used to it, but it stings every time. It’s in how they circle, how they speak. Sometimes he’s on the phone and she can _tell_ it’s Lewis because the rhythm of his voice changes, just a little, slows and softens around the consonants the way Lewis’s does. She’s not sure he realizes he even does it, but she can hear it. But he’s careful, and she’s distracting, and even if there’s something there, she’s not sure they’ve ever even mentioned it.)

Matthew knows something’s bothering her, but he only asks once. She doesn’t lie to him, just says she’s still thinking, and he lets it go. If he guesses what it’s about, he says nothing. Every time she comes back from speaking with Lewis, though, whether it’s the gym or she goes to the Barnard-side Starbucks for coffee or winds up arguing with her over _Turn of the Screw_ and the Bronte sisters, he has this odd expression on his face like…she’s not sure. It’s a look she hasn’t categorized yet, but he only ever gets it when she comes in mixed up with Darcy Lewis.

Which is evidence in and of itself, she supposes.

Elektra weighs a lot of options. She could talk to Lewis, but she thinks that Lewis might dodge her. (She dodges things she doesn’t want to talk about, Darcy Lewis. She just looks at you, and changes the subject. She’s the best at it that Elektra has ever seen, the warning look and the shift in topic, but she does it, and it’s infuriating. Occasionally Elektra wants to shake her by the scruff of the neck.) She’s not about to ask Matthew, because she knows him, and she knows that if she asks _have you ever had feelings for Darcy Lewis_ he’d think she was accusing him of something that she knows he would never do, and she doesn’t want to tangle over that. She could ask Jennifer Walters, but the woman’s guarded and leery of her, because Walters is like Nelson; she knows a predator when she sees one.

(Elektra wonders about Walters too, sometimes. There are streaks in her that might turn into claws. For now, though, the woman shies away. Elektra can’t say she minds it.)

Then there’s the obvious solution. She doesn’t like that she has to pick the obvious one, but eventually she’s too fed up with the whole thing not to. Obvious, then, it is.

Franklin Nelson likes to haunt the Barnard-side Starbucks where Lewis works. She discovers this through two days of tailing him around (ignoring Matthew and his pointed eyebrows when he catches her at it) and she’s slightly despairing of how Nelson never actually notices she’s following him. That isn’t really her problem, though, so she waits until she knows for sure Matthew and Lewis aren’t anywhere nearby (one’s taking a test, and the other’s at the gym, respectively; Matthew’s had his head in his textbooks for days) before she slinks in after him, and waits.

She stands just beside his table until it’s quite clear he hasn’t noticed her. Still, it takes her a full minute before she finally just grits her teeth, and jumps in with both feet. “Were Matthew and Lewis ever together?”

“Holy _shit_ ,” Nelson yips, and knocks his coffee cup over. It’s paper, so thankfully nothing shatters, but he’s still cursing a blue streak as it spreads all over the table. “Holy fuck. _Shit_. You need a fucking bell.”

“Or you need better ears,” she says, and he’s scowling as he grabs the napkins from the end of the table to pat uselessly at the spill. “Either one.”

“So funny.” He wads up the soaking napkins and sets them aside. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a question, I asked it.”

“Yeah, but what are you doing here? In my Starbucks. Asking _me._ You could ask one of them. It’s not that hard.” He shakes his head once. “Actually, come to think of it, why the fuck are you asking that at all? It’s pretty clear how life’s going at the moment.”

“It’s not a hard question, Nelson. And I’m not asking because of the reasons you think.”

“You have no idea what I’m thinking right now.”

She bites her tongue to keep back the acid. Elektra drops into the chair opposite him. “Just—could you answer the question?”

“Best friend’s current girlfriend comes up to ask if best friend is or ever has been in love with other best friend. Yeah, not a big deal.” He folds up more napkins, not looking at her. There’s coffee creeping into the corner of his textbook. Elektra snags a napkin from the pile, and sets it against the book. Nelson doesn’t notice. “How the hell am I supposed to know that? They don’t tell me everything.”

“Nelson.”

“Foggy,” he snaps. “Actually, no, don’t call me that. Just—Nelson’s fine.”

“That’s what I thought.” She takes a deep breath in through her nose. “Look, just—they both talk a lot about you. You’re important to them. They tell you things. And I want to know, because—just—seriously. It’s not a big deal. I’m not about to do anything to either of them. I know—I know that it’s not happening, I can promise you that. I just want to know if I’m right, that’s all.”

Franklin Nelson is completely incapable of telling a lie. It’s written all over his face, the answer, before he can think of a single word to say. Still, Elektra sits, hands folded on the table, and waits until he figures something out. It doesn’t take that long. He’s a lot of things, Foggy Nelson, but stupid isn’t one of them. He works on his feet. “Look, I don’t know. Sometimes, from my perspective, it seemed like a maybe, maybe not situation. That’s probably not the answer you’re looking for. Neither of them ever said anything to me, and if you ask them they’ll probably deny it—”

“Which is why,” she says, “I’m asking you.”

That ruffles him. He blows his hair out of his eyes, rakes it back away from his face. “Like I said, they didn’t say anything, nothing ever happened, there you go, zip, kaput, end of discussion. Now you’re either gonna buy me a new coffee or leave or both, and I don’t care in which order you do it.”

Elektra slides out of her chair, gets to her feet. She’s pulling her gloves back on when she stops, and turns back. “Look,” she says again. “I know you don’t like me. That’s okay. I don’t care if you like me or not. I’m not a nice person, and never have been. But there’s one thing I can promise you, and that’s that I would never, ever willingly hurt him. Or her. Not ever. She’s—” her throat catches for a second. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a friend. And Matthew is—”

The words fail her again. Words always fail her. She shoves her hand deep into her glove, pulls harder than she needs to. Nelson is looking at her with wide eyes. Elektra stares back until a tiny rivulet of coffee drops off the edge of the table onto his jeans, and he yelps like a puppy at the shock of it.

(She buys a coffee before she goes, and pays for a refill of whatever it was Nelson was drinking to be sent over to his table. She doesn’t look back as she leaves.)

.

.

.

Two days later, she gets a call from her father.

Elektra twines her fingers around the hem of the blanket. She’s not sick, not exactly; she’s had awful periods since she first started, late, at sixteen. Birth control usually only makes things worse, for some godforsaken reason—she still takes it, because she’d rather do that than not, but she’s spent months lusting after an IUD and hasn’t been able to schedule an appointment for it. (Not because she can’t afford it, or she doesn’t want it, but because her father’s political policies on birth control are very stringent. It’s a miracle she can even get the pills without him knowing. If she scheduled the insertion, he’d find out somehow, and the fallout would be spectacular.)

Some months she’s all right with some high-dose pain medication, but others—God. Others she can barely get out of bed without wanting to vomit or faint or both. When she hadn’t turned up for coffee that morning, Lewis had called (“You’re never late, E, what gives, I have the thing here waiting—holy shit, you sound like hell, what happened?”) Elektra honestly can’t remember if she’d sworn under her breath about the pain in Greek or in English, but either way Lewis had turned up as soon as her shift ended with movies and an honest-to-God hot water bottle, the kind Elektra hasn’t seen anyone use since her grandmother passed. “It’s Jen’s,” Lewis had said, and filled it with boiling water. “And the sucker heats to like…a million Kelvin, so wrap it in a blanket—or just…put it on your skin, that’s okay too.”

She’s still not certain if Lewis had called Matthew while she was dozing through part of the movies (many explosions, which for some reason have always been able to put Elektra to sleep; they’re soothing) or if he’d just turned up on his own, but midway between _Ocean’s Eleven_ and _Taken_ , he’d appeared out of the ether. She gets prickly when she’s like this, her skin puffy and uncomfortable, so he doesn’t touch her; he just settles next to her on the couch, and keeps a braille book in his lap, heavy and spiral-bound. Lewis, on the other hand, had crammed herself in between Elektra and the arm of the couch, so even if she’s not actually _touching_ Elektra (there are three blankets between her and Lewis, not to mention Lewis’s nest of hoodies) she’s leaning into Elektra’s shoulder as Liam Neeson talks about tracking his daughter down, making impatient noises at the political consequences of all the international laws the man’s breaking in an attempt to get the girl back.

It’s…hm. She keeps peeking at them, not quite sure what to do. It’s the first time since she’d figured it out that she’s seen the pair of them in the same room, and there’s no hint from either of them that they’re even aware of it. Well, she thinks, catching Matthew’s mouth twitching when Lewis gets particularly shrill. Maybe one of them has an inkling. But then Matthew turns his head towards her in a question, lifts a hand and touches his fingertips to the arch of Elektra’s foot, sticking out from underneath the blankets, and she’s guessing again. It feels…not achy, exactly. Not like a bruise. More like the hole left behind when a tooth is extracted, healing over but still a gap. She keeps prodding at it, trying to figure out what happened. _I would never, ever willingly hurt him,_ she’d said to Nelson, _or her,_ and she’d meant it. Not these two. She’s never really cared about hurting people—she’s good at it, really, she always has been—but she doesn’t want to hurt either of these two.

( _We’re friends?_ she’d said, and the look on Lewis’s face had been scraped, etched out with a knife, and then Matthew, the way his mouth had curled down when she’d said _I don’t like that you can hurt me_ , stinging and bloody like she’d sliced into him with a scalpel, and Christ, no, she doesn’t want to hurt them, not these two—)

She hasn’t been able to draw the shadows out of Lewis again. She catches glimpses of them, when Lewis is angry about something, when she gets a phone call or sees an article or reads something online that gets her riled. But the shadows, the rage from the alleyway, that’s hidden, flickering, smoke in fog. If not for the bruising on Lewis’s knuckles from the bag, if not for the little snatches of viciousness she only ever hears when she looks away, she’d wonder if she’d imagined the entire thing. And Matthew—she hasn’t asked him, if only because she’s still not sure he’s even realized that the shadows are _there._

(No, that’s wrong—there’s one more place she sees it, and it’s when she’s coaching Lewis through something in the gym, shifting her elbows and her knees and her fists back into position. She always tells Lewis exactly what each blow will do to a man, which tendons pop and just how much pressure it takes to break a trachea, and every time her mouth goes thin and her eyes blaze and she _works_ at it. She complains about the aches and the bruises, but she works at it, and when Patricia asks why, all she says is “I’d rather know anyone trying to come after me isn’t going to get up again then worry about what they’ll do to me in court later.”

And the _hiss_ of it, it’s still curling in Elektra’s throat, still twisting through her fingers, because that hissing sound, God, she _knows_ it—)

(Patricia mentions one day that Lewis sneaks in sometimes between the secretarial shift changes, and heads right for the bags. Elektra doesn’t feel particularly guilty when she leaves a membership card taped to the underside of one of the Starbucks mugs she uses when she stops by the coffee shop on Wednesday mornings, even though Lewis tries to give it back for two weeks.)

So, clinically: she’s bruised. She’s not bleeding and she’s not cut to shreds and she’s not broken anywhere. She’s a little bruised, and she’s not even sure that the bruising is from the idea that Lewis and Matthew might care about each other beyond the sort of relationship that either of them have with Nelson. If not for the alley, that would have been it, but with this—no. Not exactly.

_You and I, we’re special. We’re different from the rest of them. I don’t know if you realize just how much._

She almost doesn’t notice when her phone starts buzzing, she’s so caught up in her own thoughts. It’s only when Lewis nudges her and says, “E,” that she realizes it’s hers. The caller ID reads _Unknown Number_. When she tries to pull her arm out of the blankets, though, something snags.

“I’m stuck,” Elektra says. Which is stupid. Something burns in her chest, like a coal. “I’m _stuck._ ”

“It’s okay,” Lewis says, and hits accept on the phone. Matthew starts tugging at the blankets. “Hello, this is Elektra’s phone.” Lewis lifts her eyebrows at Elektra, and then turns away a little. “Yeah, she’s right here. Can I tell her who’s calling?”

“It’s my father,” says Elektra. _If I can do a back-flip off of a water tower and free race across the rooftops of New York City then how the hell can I not get my arm out from this blanket without assistance?_ “Just—can I have it?”

“I’m a friend,” says Lewis, and her eyebrows snap together. On Elektra’s other side, Matthew’s mouth goes thin. “No, I’m not—she’s trying to get untangled from something, just a minute.” There’s a pause, and then she says, in a very different voice, “Wow, okay, no. That is not a question I’m answering.”

 _Christ._ Elektra yanks her hand free, but there’s already been too many precious seconds wasted. Lewis has a look on her face like she’s just been smacked. “Give me the phone,” Elektra says, and Lewis hands it over with a look on her face like she’s smelled something strange. Elektra doesn’t bother with a hello. When she presses the phone to her ear, she says (in Greek, because she knows Matthew won’t understand it, and neither will Lewis, probably) “What were you telling her?”

“Watch your tone, Elektra.” Someone’s chattering in Greek on the other end of the line; she can make out the rhythm but not the words, and it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Elektra still thinks in Greek, most of the time, but since she uses English so often here in the city, actually hearing it—it’s almost alien. “If you have to insist on sleeping with coeds, could you at least not do it during the holidays? The White House Press Corps are searching for something to photograph while the President and his family are locked away in Camp David, and they’re not above making a trip to New York for a good photo.”

“What do you want?” Elektra says, because there’s no way she can respond to that without getting drawn into a shouting match. Or, more accurately, a stand-off of increasingly sharp voices, and then someone hanging up. “You never call.”

“I need you to come to an event tonight,” he says. “Nikolas was supposed to contact you about it two weeks ago. It’s a dinner with the Senator of New York.”

“He did. I told him I couldn’t.”

“Nonsense,” says Hugo. “I told them you would be there. Besides, do you have something else that you’re doing tonight?”

“I’m sick,” says Elektra, and her voice is a bit more wooden than she would like. She stands, keeping one of the blankets tight around her shoulders as she makes her slow way to the window, staring out at the city. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Lewis look at Matthew, touch his shoulder. Then she rolls over the back of the couch, and heads into the kitchen. “Even if I’d said yes, I would have had to cancel.”

“What a coincidence that you’re ill when I need you,” Hugo says, and on the couch Matthew makes a little sound that she only ever hears in the dark, a snapping noise in the back of his throat. He can’t have possibly understood the Greek, but the tone is clear enough. Elektra shakes her head at him, so minutely that Lewis doesn’t seem to notice. Still, Matthew listens. He sticks to the couch, stiff and uncomfortable and broiling. “I thought we were beyond this, Elektra. I told you when you went to Columbia that there would be times when I would need you to help me with work.”

“And I told you that when I say no, I mean it. I can’t come to any event this evening.”

“Elektra—”

“No,” she says, and she only realizes it’s in English when Lewis comes to abrupt attention in the kitchen. “I can’t. Unless you want me vomiting on someone’s shoes, I’m not coming to the event.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“You know how I get,” Elektra snaps. “Either you get to have me throw up and faint in the middle of the ballroom, or you leave me alone for the night. I told you, no. I’m not doing it.”

Her father goes quiet for a second. Then he says, “Have you been taking your medication, Elektra?”

She hangs up. She doesn’t even say anything. She hangs up, and she tosses her phone onto the windowsill, out of reach, so she doesn’t smash the thing against the floor. For a dreadful, gut-lurching moment (and her whole body’s already sore and aching, she can’t handle her stomach rebelling, not right now) she thinks her father might call back. But the phone stays quiet. When she looks around, both Lewis and Matthew are watching her, waiting.

Elektra shakes her head once, and goes into the bathroom to throw up.

It’s a good ten minutes before she comes back out. They’ve been talking, she thinks. Lewis shuts up very fast when Elektra reappears in the hallway, pulling the blanket back over her shoulders as she curls into the couch. Matthew’s wrapped himself around a mug of coffee, weaving his hands together over the ceramic, but when he sits down, he knocks his shoulder into hers without speaking. Lewis comes around the other side of the couch, fretting with the hem of her sweatshirt.

“Elektra,” Matthew says, and Elektra shakes her head. She pulls her knees up against her chest.

“I’m fine.” Her voice cracks when it comes out, breaking crockery. Matthew’s mouth goes even thinner.

“You wanna talk about it?” Lewis says, lightly. The way she’s standing, though—she looks ready to fight. Elektra shakes her head.

“No.”

“Okay,” she says, and drops back down onto the sofa.  Elektra rests her cheek to her knees, turning her face away from Lewis. She’s not sure she can deal with people looking at her, right now. She wants to tell the two of them to get out, wants to _scream,_ but she can’t. Her whole body hurts, and her throat aches, and her father just implied she’s off her meds because she told him no, and God, she wants to fight someone right now. She wants to hurt someone. She wants—

 _—blood and bone popping under her hand and the give of a cheekbone against her knuckles, currents catching at her hair and the hard brick of a building against her back as she stands there, daring them all, find me, fight me, let me hurt you_ —

“Do you—” Lewis fidgets for a second. “I, um. I’m gonna tell you something. And I don’t know if it’ll help, but—I don’t know. It might. Can I say something?”

Elektra doesn’t move. She nearly pulls the blanket up over her head, hiding away from the pair of them. Matthew keeps his shoulder pressed to hers.

“Matt’s, uh. Matt’s heard this story. But, um.” Lewis draws in a breath. “Y’know, I left home when I was fifteen. My mom and I don’t get along.”

Elektra doesn’t say anything. She draws her knees closer to her chest underneath the blankets, and turns her head to watch Lewis, unblinking. Lewis swallows, and peers at Elektra through her hair before hooking it back behind her ears.

“She’s depressed,” Lewis says. “And an alcoholic. And, uh. We just—we fought more the older I would get. I realized a few years ago that towards the end it was more me taking care of her then her taking care of me. But, whatever. When I was fifteen, we had a big fight, nasty one. So I left. I haven’t—I haven’t really talked to her since. When I sent her the paperwork to emancipate myself, she signed it fine, no fight. No contact at all.”

The rage hits her all at once, a bomb going off in her ribs. She’s furious, and Elektra can’t figure out if she’s furious with Lewis for bringing this up, or with Lewis’s mother for being awful, or at all of it. At everything. She bites her tongue hard enough to taste copper, and shuts her eyes, tucking her face into her knees.

“But I feel bad that I don’t talk to her,” she says. On Elektra’s other side, Matthew stills. “You know, because—there are a lot of reasons. But mostly because I don’t—sometimes I lie awake and think, _what if she dies and I don’t know until after she’s buried?_ Or—or _what if she gets arrested,_ or _what if she gets sick and needs me_ , or…I don’t know. Stuff like that kinda creeps up on you in the middle of the night. I guess the point is it’s complicated, but I don’t—I don’t regret leaving, and protecting myself. And I don’t know what kind of relationship you have with your dad, but like…I guess I just wanted to say that.”

She doesn’t say _you shouldn’t regret it, either,_ but it echoes. Elektra squeezes her eyes shut, and curls into a tighter ball. Matthew—and it’s Matthew, she knows how he touches, even through three blankets and a sweatshirt—traces his hand down her spine, once, twice, three times. When she doesn’t flinch, he curls an arm around her, and draws her forward until her head’s resting against his chest. There’s a murmur. Then something warm and heavy presses into her back. Lewis, she thinks. A cheek to the back of her shoulder and a hand on her arm over the blankets, a mess of hair out of the corner of her eye. Matthew’s heart is beating under her ear. And it should feel so, so odd, and unwanted, because she _hates_ people touching her, especially when she feels like she’s falling apart, but—God. She heaves a breath, squeezes her eyes so tightly closed that it actually stings. Lewis shifts her head, and then lets out a breath that makes Elektra think of the aftermath of tears.

“We have you, okay?” says Lewis, and Matthew echoes it not with words but with his lips against the top of her head, fingers pressing into her shoulder.

Elektra doesn’t cry. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t break. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: more explicit discussion of symptoms of OCD, slightly more explicit discussion of being committed to a psychiatric facility, gaslighting by a parent, emotional abuse/manipulation by a parent, discussion of rape, rape, references to/scenes inspired by the Columbia rape scandal (the one with the mattress), canon-typical violence, and more Catholic Guilt (TM).

He never catches Elektra without a hint of Darcy on her, now. The other way around is the same. It’s not every day, he doesn’t think, but scents linger, and even if they shower, or sweat, or drown themselves in something else, ink or blood or wind or the city (neither of them wear perfume, Darcy because she says it makes her sneeze, Elektra because she doesn’t want to be remembered by smell), they layer over each other in a complicated pattern that makes him think of Celtic knots. Coffee from the Starbucks in Elektra’s hair. Threads of Elektra’s soap underneath Darcy’s fingernails. The gym, the bags they both use, hints of apartments and pens and papers and violence. One day Darcy borrows a hair tie from Elektra, and it tugs at his attention for _hours_. The pair of them together makes his head spin.

(It’s the violence that’s truly distracting, though. He’s still not sure what Elektra’s trying to do, teaching Darcy how to fight. There’s something in him that _curls_ whenever he thinks of it, bares its teeth and says _yes, make sure she can’t be touched, make sure she can save herself if she needs to_ , but that’s tangled and dark and furious and outside of midnight and blood he doesn’t let himself think about it. He never goes to the gym with them, if only to try and keep his sanity.)

He can tell it scares Foggy. Darcy spending so much time with Elektra. Matt spending so much time with her. He never says a thing about it, but he clicks his teeth and shifts his hands and rocks from foot to foot like he’s trying desperately to keep his mouth shut. Matt doesn’t know how to bridge the gap. He considers it, and he can’t say that he would have introduced Elektra to Foggy or Darcy at all, if she hadn’t asked. He can’t even say he would have mentioned her, because God, that’s too close to the things he’s trying to hide. Foggy being frightened, it’s proof, he thinks, in a bleak moment. It’s proof that Foggy would never be able to understand it, why he does this, why he wants to. Elektra doesn’t bother to hide the violence, not like Matt does, and Foggy’s frightened of her. So what would that mean for all of them, if Matt dared to tell the truth?

_I’m not brave enough to find out._

Elektra’s been watching him, lately. Well, differently than usual. She’s examining, tilting her head as if she can pick him apart at the seams. It’s something she hasn’t done since the first few weeks of them being together, or being, or orbiting, or whatever it was they were doing at the start, and it doesn’t…It doesn’t make him nervous, exactly, but he does wonder why. She doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t ask, and it starts to even out again after a while, but sometimes he still catches her at it. Thinking very hard, and very fast, whirling around inside her own head. She doesn’t show it on her face, but it’s in how she moves at night, when they’re running, when they’re fighting. The thoughts weigh heavy on her, knots of iron pulling at her arms and legs.

One night, he finally can’t stand it any longer. Matt stands a little apart from her on a rooftop, listening to the city, waiting for something, he’s not sure what. Elektra’s perched on the lip of the building, crouched down. Her hair’s tied up, and the scarf around her mouth is frosting over from the moisture in her breath, the chill in the air. He curls his hands into his pockets. “Did you ever find out what you were looking for?”

On the edge of the building, Elektra goes still. She folds her hands up, and stretches them high over her head. It’s starting to snow, and flakes of it are melting against her hair, drawing out hints of shampoo, sweat, smoke and coffee and something that’s just her.

“I’m not sure.”

She says it like a question. Her mouth twists a little when she hears it, as if her voice isn’t doing what she told it to do. Matt curls his hands in and out of fists, trying to get the blood flowing in his fingers. Standing still on a rooftop in winter isn’t exactly the best way to keep yourself warm.

“She enjoys it,” Elektra says abruptly. “Learning how to fight. She hasn’t said anything, but—but she enjoys it.”

He knows that, too. Matt nods, and doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure there’s anything _to_ say to that.

“You don’t mind,” she says, turning her back to the city, facing him. “You don’t mind that I’m teaching her. Do you?”

Matt shakes his head once. “No.”

“Good,” Elektra says. She steps down off the ledge, onto the roof again. “I like her.”

It’s the first time she’s said anything like that about Darcy since _she’s different,_ and Matt can’t help but wonder if that’s a piece of the puzzle that he hasn’t quite put together yet.

“I’m not going to tell her about you,” she says after a second. “So you can stop worrying.”

“I wasn’t worried,” he says, and when Elektra hooks her nails into his shoulders he knows she knows he was telling her the truth.

The next day, though. The next day is harder, if only because he’s not expecting it from _both_ of them, “Your girlfriend’s a menace,” Darcy says when she walks into the Starbucks, thunking into the booth next to him and dumping her bag onto the table. Her coat’s all sharp with ice, and there’s traces of copper under her fingernails, a blood blister forming between her thumb and forefinger. She smells like Elektra’s shampoo, like she’s just showered and she’d borrowed it to save time. Matt has to clear his throat to try and get the taste of it off his tongue. “She’s goddamn terrifying. Did you know she can break someone’s neck with her feet?”

“It hasn’t come up as a topic of conversation, no,” says Matt, and hopes that Foggy, over at the counter, didn’t hear that. “Is that what she’s teaching you? Should I be worried?”

“Not unless you give me a reason to use it on you.” She knocks into his shoulder, and the shampoo and her hair and her smile all hit him at once. Matt shuts his eyes behind his glasses, but it doesn’t do a thing. _No shit it doesn’t,_ he thinks, in a voice that sounds a little like Stick. _Don’t be an idiot. I know you’re good at it, but at least try not to be._ Darcy turns her head just a little, watching him out of the corner of her eye as she yanks her textbooks out of her bag. “You’re really okay with me and her being friends, right? I mean, you’re not just like…doing that thing where you don’t say anything because you don’t want to rock the boat or whatever.”

“You sound like Foggy.”

“Foggy’s still under the impression that he’s going to be cannibalized if he so much as _looks_ at E, which…amuses me more than it should if I’m gonna be honest.” Darcy shrugs, and her shoulder bumps against his again. His skin stings a little. _Stop it,_ Matt thinks, and doesn’t yank away from her. _Stop._ “But seriously, Matt. Tell me. You’re okay with it?”

If he thinks about it, actually thinks about it, then no, he probably shouldn’t be. Elektra’s—they’ve been together for weeks, months now, and it’s like nothing he’s ever known, really, the seamlessness of it. The _craving_ , that’s the only word for it, the heavy feel of her in his blood and winding into his bones. Dark and light and fire, all smoke and flame, and he shouldn’t be putting that together with Darcy, shouldn’t let them be mixing like this. Because Darcy’s—God. Darcy blazes, and sometimes it feels like he can’t turn away from it, the magnesium gleam of her. She’d been like that before Elektra, before any of this, since the start, really. Transfixingly bright. The flash and snapping crack of a firework. She blazes, and Elektra flickers like a single candle in a velvety, shadowed room, and the pair of them together: it’s like watching a firestorm.

( _—like the whole world is on fire but it’s all trapped under your skin_ —)

To keep being stuck in this, to keep spiraling into it, it’s like taking a needle and carving away underneath his fingernails. It’s wrong, it’s an insult to the pair of them, to be so trapped, to not shake himself out of it the way he ought to. He can only hope it doesn’t show on his face, that he’s at least managed to keep himself from hurting one of them, either of them, both of them. And if they’d stayed in their own separate orbits, if they’d kept themselves apart, then maybe it wouldn’t be cutting into him, the guilt. He wakes up sometimes feeling like he’s falling back into his own skin, terrified— _please, God, don’t let either of them find out about this. Don’t let them see how twisted I’m becoming._

(He thinks Foggy knows, because sometimes he catches Foggy looking between Matt and Darcy and back again, especially when one of them mentions Elektra, catches Foggy watching and sighing and changing the subject for no reason that he can really establish—)

But he can’t say he’s not okay with it. He can’t say that some part of him doesn’t _enjoy_ it, for some sick reason, that he doesn’t have something roosting in his chest that seems to purr whenever one of them mentions the other. Because Christ, he cares so much about the pair of them, both of them, and they seem to be friends, and that’s—that’s _important._ He’s not sure he can ever actually say how important it is, that they get along the way that they do. That they actually like each other. It’s—it’s powerful, that sense. Like syzygy.

“Matt?” Darcy says, and he drags himself out of it. He turns his head towards her. “You went kinda quiet. Should I take that as a bad sign?”

“Hm?”

She frowns. “Seriously, are you okay? You look like you’re gonna throw up.”

“I’m fine.” Matt hesitates. Then he touches two fingers to the back of her wrist, very lightly, barely enough for her to feel it. Darcy’s eyes drop to his hand, and then she looks at his face again, something curling around her mouth that might be a question. “No, I don’t mind.” 

Darcy watches him for a breath, for two. Then she knocks her shoulder into his, and leaves it there. “Cool,” she says. “You want me to quiz you on something for class tomorrow?” 

“I think I’m good,” he says, and pulls his hand away.

.

.

.

E’s skittish for a while, after the whole thing with her dad. Darcy can’t really blame her. She’d be skittish too, if a friend picked up the phone for her and wound up accused of sullying her reputation with her queer germs. (Usually she doesn’t talk about the whole bi thing, mostly because a lot of people get sketchy as fuck about it— _but if you date a guy, that means you’re straight, right?_ —but she can’t say she’s ever heard anyone get quite so chilly about the idea that she’s someone’s girlfriend since she watched the A&E _Pride and Prejudice_ and Lady Catherine laid down some unholy hell.) She’s never actually told E what her dad said, either, because um, no, she’s not getting in the middle of that, especially when E is still jumping like a hare every time her phone rings. Still, sometimes Darcy thinks that E might be trying to figure it out. She stares at Darcy a lot when she thinks Darcy isn’t looking, and keeps tapping at the back of her phone with her fingernails, like she’s trying to stab her father through the case.

(Elektra’s father’s name is Hugo, she discovers through Google. He doesn’t look like the sort of person who would say “You know that she’s using you, don’t you?” to someone he doesn’t even know. “She’s done it since she was a child. She’s not capable of empathy, and never has been.” She wakes up and stares at the ceiling, thinking about that, wonders how someone can so absolutely misunderstand their own child. She wonders if Hugo Natchios knows Elektra at all.)

It’s probably a week and a half post-The Drama when it finally comes back up, though. E’s bracing the bag for Darcy, for once, because apparently Darcy’s been depending too much on her right hand and needs to work on her left hook. (“I thought I was learning krav, not boxing,” Darcy had said, and E had cuffed her up the back of the head—lightly, but enough to muss her hair—before replying, “You’ll learn what I teach you. Besides, I’ll not be the one to peel you off the asphalt when someone comes at you from your weaker side,” and there’s…not a lot Darcy can do to argue with that.) She’s been working for a good fifteen minutes when E swipes a few strands of hair up out of her face, and says, “What did my father say to you?”

Darcy stops. Sweat’s dripping into her eyes. “Have you been sitting on that question for a week?”

E gives her a look that Foggy (from a distance) has termed the _I’m going to tear your arms off with my teeth_ expression. Darcy thinks it’s more _quit this shit or I’ll have to smack you_ look, but then again, smacking with Elektra would probably involve a lot of blood. And possibly a baseball bat. So…maybe not Foggy’s entirely wrong about the Chewbacca-style arm-tearing. “I have an idea. I just want to know if I’m right or not.”

Darcy shakes her hand out of a fist, flexing her fingers. She’d snapped one of her nails yesterday at work, and the stub is still sore. “Basically he wanted to know if I was sleeping with you,” she says eventually, and hits the bag again, hard enough that she feels it all the way up into her ribs. “I don’t remember his exact phrasing.”

( _Not another one_ , is what he’d said. _Tell me, is she going to flaunt you in my face, too?_ But that…no. She’s not telling E that.)

E mutters something under her breath. It’s not Greek, it’s Spanish, and the vulgarity nearly makes Darcy choke. “You don’t seem bothered that that’s what he thought.”

“Christ, no.” She hits the bag again, and again, fixing her elbow when E taps hard at it with her fingernails. “Would be kinda hypocritical if I did.”

“Hypocritical?”

“Is that a roundabout way of asking what flavor of the rainbow I am, E? Because you could just say, y’know, _hey, Darcy, with one being Arnold Schwarzenegger and ten being NyanCat firing rainbows out its ass, exactly how gay are you_?”

Elektra doesn’t snort, but she does do her Rice Krispy crackle-and-pop thing for the first time in like…a week, and that’s almost as good. “It’s not my business.”

“It’s not like I hide it. I just don’t talk about it.” She shakes out her fingers. “I mean, I try not to put a strict name on it, because literally _every_ name gets you shit from someone, and plus things can change anyway, but like…yeah. Bisexual, probably. Panromantic, probably. Possibly pansexual. Possibly poly. It’s all mixed up most days and just…I don’t think about definitions, much.” She considers. “Feels weird to say it like that.”

“Hand,” says E, “fist, now,” and Darcy obeys. It’s only once she’s hit the bag for a minute or two longer that E clears her throat, and says, “Panromantic?”

“Romantic attraction to all identities,” says Darcy. Her arms are aching. “You know how with some people you’re like…you get squishy feelings and you want to just listen to them talk for ages and ages and ages, because you like them so much that it feels like it’s coming out your ears?”

Elektra watches her for a second, and then says, “Possibly.”

“That’s romantic attraction. Sexual attraction is like…raging sexual tension and shit and you don’t give a damn what they think or who they are, you just want to pin them down and do terrible things to them because they’re just driving you up the goddamn wall.”  

“There’s a difference?”

“Sexual attraction versus romantic attraction, yeah.”

“I’ve never heard of this,” Elektra says, like the world has deeply offended her somehow. That, or someone’s stabbed her in the back. “How have I never heard of this?”

“I mean, it’s not like the media talks about it too much. You know how long it took for me to hear the word _bisexual_ without _experimental_ attached? Until I moved to New York, that’s how long. And even now it’s still like…you see a bi woman on TV, she’s usually just _experimenting_ until the male lead cools her jets and makes her want to have all the babies. And you never see ace people, or aromantic people, or like…any variation of romantic identities on television like…ever.” She waggles her fingers at E. “Yay for American media.”

“Hit the bag,” Elektra says. “You’re stalling.”

“Maybe my arms hurt.”

“Ten more minutes.”

Darcy makes a face at her (E cracks in the back of her throat again) and then goes back to punching the bag. She only has two minutes left when E shifts, resettles her hand against the vinyl.

“You said panromantic. There are other kinds?”

She rocks back on her feet, and lashes out with her fist again. “There’s a bunch of them, but basically the top ones—heteroromantic, which, obvious; homoromantic, obvious, again; biromantic, panromantic, and then aromantic, which is the absence of romantic attraction at all. And there are varying shades of each one, like…you can be biromantic but still lean more towards women than men, or men over women, or whatever. Homoromantic? Maybe quieter women are more romantically attractive to you than loud, in-your-face women. Different people, different flavors. And all of it is relative.”

Darcy hits the bag so hard that she can _feel_ it when her knuckles scream. She bounces back, away from it. E doesn’t notice, really. She’s thinking. Darcy’s flexing her left hand in and out of a fist when she says, “What’s poly, then?”

“Hm?”

“You said something about poly.”

“Oh,” says Darcy. “Sorry, forgot. Polyromanticism. It’s like—you know how in movies and shit people are always going _I can’t love them both at once, what is this mindfuckery?_ You actually can, that’s like—a recognizable, researchable thing. Associated with polyamory, which is the practice of having more than one intimate relationship at a time. Mostly polyromantic means you can have romantic feelings for more than one person at once. And there are variations on that one, too, levels of attraction and stuff, but that’s the general overview.”

Elektra turns her face towards the window. It’s bright outside, even if it’s freezing, and the skyscrapers look like needles jabbing up into the clouds. Then she says, “Hm,” again, like she’s decided something.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “Does it work?”

“You’d have to ask someone who actually has experience with it. Most of my dates end up as one-night stands and I’m perfectly okay with this state of affairs.”

Trish walks in, and waves at them. Darcy waves back. E doesn’t notice. She’s still thinking, cataloguing, Darcy’s pretty sure. Reorienting something in her head. Darcy wonders if it’s the same face she’d made herself when she’d talked about this stuff with Jen, and thinks, _shit._ It’s better than E fixing on what her dad said, at least. She might need to give Matt a head’s up, though.

“You okay?” she says, when a full minute has gone by and E’s said nothing at all. E doesn’t jump. When her eyes snap up, though, Darcy’s mouth goes a little dry, because she’s never seen _that_ face on E before. Like she’s forgotten to put on a smile. There’s a rawness to it that pricks at Darcy’s throat.

“I’m fine,” says E. Her voice curls. “Spar with me.”

“You’ll beat my ass into the ground, I’ve been punching a bag for like…ages.”

“It’ll be good practice for you,” says E, and Darcy groans her way onto the mats.

.

.

.

Her father won’t stop calling.

She sends him to voicemail, every time, but he doesn’t stop. He _doesn’t_ stop. She deletes the messages, she ignores the calls, she refuses to acknowledge Nikolas when he crops up in the corner of her eye. She dodges him by going up fire escapes and through alleys, vanishing up into the city before Nikolas can even register that she’s gone. He’s a suit, a politician. He’s never been able to keep up.

Her father even gets her brother to call, one day, a Skype call that she terminates as soon as he says, “Dad’s been trying to reach you.” Because he _knows_ better, her brother. He knows what their relationship is like. He should _know_ better.

Her numbers get worse. Three to five to nine. If Lewis notices, she doesn’t say anything. Elektra doesn’t tell people about the OCD; they either figure it out, or they don’t. She’d slipped, with Matthew, and he’d picked the rhythm of it up easily, her not-so-random ticks, how she needs everything exactly right, how she feels when something’s out of place or something doesn’t go well. It helps that he needs to keep up the image of being fully blind, and he always puts things in the same spots they came from. Lewis adopts it within three weeks, and she suspects Matthew might have told her until he shakes his head and says “Darcy notices things” in a way that means _she worked you out ages ago._ Lewis never asks, but she starts putting things back in the right place before Elektra’s fingers start twitching. It’s enough.

(It used to be worse. Scaling it back to the numbers, how many times she stirs her coffee, counting the steps she takes on the stairs, measuring herself, keeping time, that’s so much better than it used to be. She used to scrape scabs off because they felt wrong. She used to yank on her hair until it split, trying to find odd strands, because _yes, they do feel wrong, don’t tell me they don’t_. She used to scrub at her fingernails until they bled, convinced there was something wrong inside her. This is much better than it could be. But she’s spiraling, and when she’s spiraling she’s never sure how to make it stop.)

He’ll get sick of it in a month, she thinks. He’ll be sick of it soon. She knows her own limits, how long she can last without needing to retreat, and this isn’t anywhere close. She just needs to hold it together until he does.

.

.

.

Foggy has a meeting with his senior thesis class that’s running late, and Matt’s off doing whatever, so Darcy winds up dumping all her homework on Elektra’s coffee table and settling in for the long haul. Elektra, she discovers, has reading glasses. She could pull off a sexpot librarian look with absolutely no problem, and it makes Darcy more than a little jealous. She doesn’t say this, for obvious reasons— _awkward_ —but it’s true. Doesn’t help that when she’s thinking E takes her glasses off and sets her teeth into the end of the earpiece, staring up at the ceiling like she can trace out words on the paint.

(Elektra’s hot, okay, she’s noticed that. She’s not _blind._ Jesus.)

Still, Darcy’s drowning in Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Marx when Elektra’s phone goes off, and keeps buzzing. “It’s my father again,” says E, when Darcy looks up at her and blinks. “He’s been badgering me about the event I missed. I’m just—I’ve been ignoring him.”

Darcy scoffs. “He’s been bothering you because you were _sick_?”

E’s eyes shutter. “It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter. He does this when I tell him no. In a month he’ll be over it.”

“In a _month?_ ”

“I told you, it doesn’t matter.” She digs her thumbnail into the line of her cuticle, picking at her nail polish. She scrapes in cycles, one-two-three-pause, one-two-three-pause. “He’s been like this since I was thirteen. He’ll stop eventually.”

She wants to curl her hands into fists. She wants to snarl. E doesn’t sound like E, not right now. She sounds—not frightened, exactly. Wary. Worried. _Resigned,_ she thinks, and that’s—that’s wrong, hanging on E, that looks entirely too wrong, and she can’t help it. It slips out before she can stop it. “Can I talk to him?”

Elektra blinks. “Why would you want to talk to him?”

“He shouldn’t be bothering you like that, E, that’s harassment. If I say something—”

“ _No_ ,” E says, but Darcy’s already snagged the phone and darted back out of reach. E could take it from her, she knows, easily, as easily as she could probably snap Darcy’s neck, but though E leaps to her feet and clenches her hands, she doesn’t make a move.  “Lewis—”

“I have something I wanna say to your dad,” Darcy says, and Christ, when did Atlanta come back? It’s curling out of her, drawling like honey. “Just—he can’t _harass_ you, Elektra. I won’t let him.”

Elektra blinks, her lashes flaring wide. She wets her lips. Something cracks open in her eyes, magma shining through rock. Like—no, that’s stupid. Like she’s been waiting for something like this. Like she’s triumphant, though Darcy has no idea why that would ever be the case. Then it’s gone again, and she’s shaking her head. “Lewis—” Her voice cracks. “Darcy, please—”

It’s the first time she’s ever said Darcy’s name. It’s also the first time she’s ever heard Elektra say please. They’re both so shocked that they freeze, staring at each other. There’s the raw look on E’s face again, choked and strangled and still creeping through. Darcy wonders how many masks Elektra puts on a day. She’s a lighthouse, Darcy thinks, the light constantly spinning and only ever spilling out into the world in one way, in one place. For Elektra, she thinks, that’s her violence. The rest of her’s buried underneath a bank vault. Somehow, though, right now, Elektra’s left the door open, and Darcy can see inside, way, way further than she thinks Elektra ever meant to show. She swallows.

“E.”

Elektra doesn’t say anything. She curls her hands into fists. The door isn’t closing.

“If you don’t want me to say anything to him,” Darcy says, “tell me, and I won’t.”

The phone buzzes in her hand.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do. Tell me no, and I won’t.”

E opens her mouth. She shuts it again, and turns her face away. Her hair slips off her shoulder to brush against her cheek. She doesn’t even breathe. Darcy wets her lips, and taps the accept button, curls her fingers close around Elektra’s cell phone. She presses it to her ear, listening to the barrage of Greek, the tone. Then she says, very carefully and clearly, “She told you no.”

The voice cuts off. He sounds nothing like Elektra, this man. His accent is heavier, and there’s an oil to him that makes her hair stand on end. “It’s you again.”

“Yeah, it’s me again.” She watches E. “She told you no. You need to back off.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Elektra’s father says, and he sounds—he sounds more shocked than angry, like he can’t believe this is happening right now. “You do know you’re just—bedmate of the month, don’t you? My daughter doesn’t keep people. She never has.”

The words ram into her, hammer blows. Darcy shuts her eyes for a moment. She says, very carefully, “You either stop bothering her, or we make you stop.”

She doesn’t mean her and Elektra. She means her and Matt. _Stop, or we make you stop._ She hangs up before Elektra’s father can do more than sputter, lets her hand drop to her side and waits for Elektra to explode. E doesn’t do a thing. She keeps her eyes away from Darcy. For a long minute, there’s silence.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she eventually says, in a brittle little voice that breaks Darcy’s heart. “He’ll be furious.”

“With me or with you?”

E shrugs, and drops down onto the couch. She’s reconstructing the door, Darcy thinks. She’s rebuilding it from the inside. Darcy runs her thumb over the screen of Elektra’s phone, and then sets it on the coffee table, and sits next to her. Not close enough to touch, but close enough.

“E.” Darcy looks up at the door frame, at the window. She swallows. God, what the hell is she supposed to say? “E, would you look at me, please?”

Elektra’s still, and she stays that way for so long that Darcy starts wondering if she should leave. Then she shifts, just a little, turning and hooking her hair behind her ear so she can watch Darcy out of the corner of her eye. It’s enough. Darcy folds her hands into the hem of her skirt, digging her nails into the seam hard enough she can feel the prick of them in her palms.

“Why do you let him hurt you?” Darcy says, and Elektra’s head snaps up and her mouth twists so fast that it’s like she’d never been vulnerable at all.

“I _don’t._ I don’t let people hurt me.”

“You look me in the eye and tell me you haven’t flinched every time your phone’s gone off for the past month, E. You look at me right now and you tell me that that isn’t true.”

Elektra doesn’t say anything. She just stares, unblinkingly. Darcy stares back at her.

“You do all these things to make sure that people can’t get to you.” Darcy folds her legs up into a lotus, still watching her. “You—you can kill someone in a million different ways. You never talk about yourself, never give anyone any ammunition. You never let anything anyone else says get under your skin, and that’s—that’s amazing to me, because you’re so damn strong that sometimes I think you could walk into adamantium and it’d shatter like glass. And that’s why I don’t get it, how you are with your dad, because God _,_ E, if this were anyone else—if _anyone_ else treated you this way you’d break them so fast you wouldn’t even be able to see it. But with your dad, you just…you don’t say anything. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen you run away from a fight. And—and I hate seeing it on you.” Darcy swallows. “I—I don’t like seeing you hurt. It—it hurts me, to see you hurt.” 

There’s a shine to E’s eyes that’s like rippling glass. Darcy can’t believe that they’re tears, not until she sees the damp on Elektra’s eyelashes. E turns her face away, wipes at the spots on her cheeks.

“If you want me to leave, I can,” Darcy says. “You can tell me to get out. Just—I don’t know. Please just—just tell me to do something. I can’t sit here and not do anything for you. And if you’d rather me leave you alone—”

“No.” Elektra’s voice cracks. “No.”

“Okay.” She blinks, furiously. Her eyes hurt. “Do you—you want me to call Matt?”

E lifts one shoulder, and lets it fall again. Darcy’s not sure if that’s a yes or a no, so she doesn’t do anything at all. For a minute, for two, there’s nothing but the sound of their breathing, Elektra’s lungs rattling a little in her chest. Then Elektra tips her head back, staring at the light hanging from the ceiling. Her throat works.

“He used to take me to the beach when I was little,” E says. The brittleness is back. “He—my mother died before I can remember. It was always my—my brother and my father and me. And he used to take us to the beach. I remember he’d—he’d fix the castles we made before they could fall over.”

She falls quiet again. Her face is smooth, mirrored. When Darcy reaches out, pushes hair out of her eyes, she doesn’t even blink.

“He told you I’m manipulating you,” says E. “I know he did. He always does.”

“If I believed him,” Darcy says, “I wouldn’t be here, E.”

Elektra’s not cold, not exactly. She’s still, coagulating like wax. She barely even blinks. “He was the last person I saw before they sent me to the hospital. I was ten. I didn’t see him again until I was thirteen. When I went home, I learned he’d told everyone I was hearing voices so he could swing a vote on mental health facilities in public hospitals.” She draws a breath. “If I know how to manipulate, I get it from him.”

Darcy strokes a hand down Elektra’s spine, and says nothing. E turns, watching her, waiting for something. The door’s not closed, not yet. It’s still open just a crack.

“He’s my father. That should mean something.”

“He’s your father,” Darcy says. “That doesn’t mean you have to let him hurt you.”

Elektra breathes out like she’s been stabbed, sharp and pained and awful, hoarse. She blinks. When she leans, Darcy almost doesn’t believe it. Not until Elektra’s put her head to Darcy’s shoulder, and left it there. She doesn’t reach out, but she bends and leans into Darcy, and doesn’t draw back.

“I hurt you,” she says.

“No, E. God, no, you—you’re not the one that hurt me, all right, just—” She can’t explain it. Elektra’s her friend, somehow, impossibly, and Elektra—she’s not entirely sure Elektra knows what that’s like. She strokes Elektra’s hair back out of her face, tangles her fingers in it. She smells like her shampoo, something close to the ocean, salty and unknown. “You’re not the one that hurt me. Don’t think that.”

“But I’m good at hurting people,” she says, so very quiet that Darcy has to strain to hear her. When Darcy lifts her hand, tangles it in Elektra’s hair, she lets out a shuddering breath that tickles against the skin of Darcy’s throat. “I’m very good at it. I’ve—I’ve always been good at it.” She thinks, for a moment. “People are right to be frightened of me.”

God, she’s going to cry. Darcy blinks, tries to clear her vision. “E, listen to me. You’re dangerous. You’ve always been dangerous. You make yourself dangerous. But E, honey, just—you’re dangerous, but you’re not bad. You’ve never been bad. And the people who are frightened of you, they—they just can’t see it, that’s all.”

Elektra barely seems to breathe. Darcy can hear it when she licks her lips. “What about your friend?”

“Foggy?” Darcy shakes her head. “Foggy’s—Foggy’s gentle. He doesn’t—he’s never had to sort out the difference, between dangerous and—and wrong.”

“But you have.”

She can’t breathe. “E.”

“You’re not scared,” Elektra says. She’s—there’s an energy buzzing through her like static, clinging, shocking. “You’ve never been scared of me. Why have you never been scared?”

Darcy opens her mouth, and closes it again. She says, “Because there are much worse things in the world that you could be than dangerous.”

Elektra raises her head. She searches Darcy’s face for what feels like years, what can only be a few seconds. She lifts both hands, and touches her fingertips to Darcy’s glasses, to her cheeks. Then she draws away again. Her eyes are dry. “Like what?” she says, in a voice that sounds like a campfire, cracking and popping and burning. “What’s worse than dangerous?”

“Ignorant,” Darcy says. “Arrogant.”

“Insane.”

“You’re not insane.” Darcy shakes her head. “You’re _not_ insane.”

E blinks, slowly. “Hateful, then,” she says. “Cruel.”

“Hate and cruelty have their own place.”

“How do you know?”

Darcy smooths hair out of Elektra’s face, away from her eyes. “I can be hateful and cruel, too,” she says, and Elektra shuts her eyes. She fists her hands up in the fabric of Darcy’s hoodie, and leans forward to hide her face in Darcy’s shoulder, breathing hard.

“Call Matthew,” she says. “Please. I just—call Matthew.”

Darcy does.

.

.

.

It takes him less than an hour to get there, but it feels like an eternity, because it keeps ringing in his head, the words.

_Hey, um. Something happened with E, can you—can you come to her apartment, please?_

It’s not something violent. He knows that already. If it had been, Darcy would have been panicked, not quiet; she wouldn’t have been dancing around it if E weren’t right there, listening. But it’s _something,_ and it makes Darcy’s voice bubble like boiling water, and so he ditches his last class of the day and makes his way over to Park Avenue without a word, to the penthouse that Elektra’s lived in for as long as he’s known her. (“I don’t like this place,” she’d said to him one night, looking out the window at the park. “It’s not mine.”

“Where would you live, if you could?”

“I don’t know.” Her half-smile had flickered, gone wicked. “Probably Greenwich.”

“Hipster,” he’d said, and Elektra had actually snorted before kissing him, touching her teeth to his lip. She’d still been smiling.)

It’s not something violent, but his palms are still damp when he stops outside the door. It takes him a second to process what’s going on inside, because it’s so quiet—it’s _so_ quiet, the quietest he’s ever heard them, neither of them talking, just heartbeats and breath and silence. It almost bowls him over when he realizes what’s happening, Elektra tipped into Darcy and Darcy holding on, carefully, so gently that it must be ripping Elektra to shreds, because Elektra never thinks she can be gentle, that she can _have_ gentle, but Elektra’s not pulling away. She’s leaning like Darcy’s propping her up, like she wants to _be_ propped up, and all the air gusts out of his lungs. Matt presses both hands to the door, just for a moment, trying to breathe. He can’t think. If he lets himself think, then he’ll shatter, and he can’t shatter right now, he _can’t,_ even if Elektra’s tapping a rhythm of three into Darcy’s kneecap in a way that makes him think she’s not worried about Darcy realizing what it means anymore. And that’s—

_Stop thinking. Stop._

He knocks, twice, and fights the urge to press his hands over his ears when Darcy says, “That’s Matt, gimme one sec,” and air catches in Elektra’s throat. It’s Darcy that opens the door, her hat missing somewhere ( _kitchen counter,_ his mind tells him, _by the coffee machine_ ) and smears across her cheeks that smell like salt. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says, and when he reaches out with one hand, she bumps her shoulder into his fingers. Elektra’s on the couch, very still, very quiet, as if she’s suspended in ice. She’s barely even breathing. “What happened? You didn’t say—”

“I, um.” Darcy shifts from foot to foot, hands in her pockets. “She should tell you the details, but—but her dad’s been being an ass, that’s all. She needs you more than me right now.”

Matt, who’s tangled up in the stillness of Elektra, how frozen she is and how her head’s cocked, listening, how she’s staring out the window and waiting for them to decide, says without thinking, “I don’t know if that’s true.”

Darcy freezes. Her heart skips, and for some reason Matt’s jumps, too, up and over something that feels a little like a crevasse. Then she says, “I really should go. Besides, I have work in a few hours.” She looks back at Elektra, once. When she reaches out, touches her fingertips to his elbows and slides in to press her cheek to his shoulder, it takes everything he has not to fall into her. She’s shaking a little, and old tears still linger on her face, and she’s drenched in Elektra, and there’s something burning underneath Elektra’s sternum that might be her heart. “I’ll be back later, probably. After ten, maybe. If you guys are going to be here.”

Elektra turns her head towards them, watching them. She doesn’t say a word. Still, Matt’s not entirely sure she’s going anywhere at the moment.

“We should still be here,” he says, but he means, _you don’t have to go._ He’s a greedy bastard, but Christ, walking in knowing that they’d be sitting there, tangled up on the couch, Darcy’s fingers in Elektra’s hair—the bruise that’s left isn’t ever going to fade, inked into his skin in blues and reds. Besides, the longer she’s standing apart from Elektra, the closer Elektra gets to trembling, like she’s about to leap up off the couch and draw Darcy back into her. “When do you get off?”

“Nine-thirty.” She shuts her eyes and breathes for a second. Then she draws away. “She’s on the couch. Just—gimme a minute.”

She goes to Elektra, then, stroking one hand through Elektra’s hair, and that hits him, too, an animal dragging its claws through his insides. Elektra doesn’t smile, exactly, but she lifts her hand and presses the very tips of her fingers to the side of Darcy’s neck like she’s fighting the urge to hold her there, and he doesn’t have any idea what to make of that, doesn’t even know how to start. It feels as though there’s something that’s blossoming in this room, caught between the three of them, and he can’t define it. Not yet. Not without destroying it entirely.

“I have to go to work,” Darcy says, in a low voice. “You want me to come back later or are you good?”

Elektra curls her fingers into the hem of Darcy’s hoodie pocket. “I’ve never been good.”

“That,” says Darcy, “is patently untrue.”

Elektra chuffs in the back of her throat, and says, “You trust too much.”

Darcy considers. Then she bends, and puts her mouth to Elektra’s scalp for a bare instant. The low curl of fire in him _blazes_ when she does it, echoing, because it’s tangible, the worry, the feeling. It’s _touchable._ It feels as if he can grasp whole handfuls of it out of the air. “My shift ends around nine-thirty, so I’ll be here around ten, ten-thirty. If you go to sleep, lemme know, I won’t show up.”

Elektra scoffs at this.

“Don’t be prissy,” Darcy says fondly, and steps away from her. Elektra’s fingers crook, like she’s trying to stop herself from clinging. “I’ll be back, okay?”

“All right.”

 _Syzygy,_ he thinks. Planets aligning, and moons and asteroids and meteors all caught up in the pull of their gravity.

Darcy presses Matt’s elbow as she goes, and the comet trails her fingers leave behind burn.

Darcy’s down the hall and seventeen floors away by the time Elektra finally takes a full breath. She holds her hand out, and Matt comes without a word. It’s only when he’s settled, when Elektra’s draped herself over his legs and rested a cheek to his shoulder, breathing very, very carefully, that he says, “Hey _._ What happened?”

Elektra doesn’t say anything for a moment. Her fingers knot up in his shirt. The warmth in her keeps growing, brighter and wilder, and he can feel it echoing into him. He doesn’t want to name it. He’s felt it in her before, with him, and he knows what it means, but he doesn’t dare name it, because if he does then he might break it and that’s—Christ. Every part of him screams when he thinks of breaking it. After a full minute, she says, in a hoarse voice, “I don’t know.”

She’s still burning up underneath her ribcage, and it’s breaking his heart. Matt puts his mouth to her temple, and then to her cheekbone, resting his lips against her skin because he needs to, because she hasn’t pushed him away. “She does that.”

There’s a cracking sound that he thinks might be her laugh. They both sit in silence.

(Darcy gets back at ten-twelve, with food, and blankets, and stupid stories about work that she tells in a never-ending stream as she sets up her laptop, brews more coffee and settles in on Matt’s right. When Matt gets up to try and grab something she seizes him by the back of his sweatshirt and yanks him back down, and Elektra rests her chin on his shoulder to watch as Darcy’s hands flare through the air, flickering, birds with their own stories. Elektra’s burning again. He stops trying to move.)

.

.

.

The next night, for the first time in months, she goes to a bar.

Elektra’s not really sure what to do. She drinks, sometimes, but she never drinks to get drunk. Going to a bar is usually something she would only do with Matthew, or Darcy, maybe, never alone. But tonight she can’t be with people she knows, and she especially can’t be with either of them, because her phone is loaded with Google searches and her heart’s still racing and she can’t get the look on Matthew’s face when he’d come in out of her head, like walking in the door and realizing that Elektra had her hands tangled in Darcy’s sweatshirt and her head on Darcy’s shoulder had punched him in the gut in the best possible way. All of that, that’s her answer. That’s something she can finally comprehend.

She wonders if he knows what it’s called. She wonders if he has any idea. She’s not certain he does. Elektra thinks Matthew on the rooftop, the question, and thinks, _no._ No, she’s fairly certain he doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if she should tell him. Matthew is hers, and if she tells him, then—then what happens? What will change? What—

_If you have cause to be jealous, the person you’re jealous over was never yours in the first place._

She doesn’t share. Elektra _doesn’t share._ She’s never shared. She’s not sure she even knows how. It’s so anathematic to the very core of herself that even the idea is repulsive. But—and this is a huge but, an _enormous_ but, the but that has her going to a bar she’s never seen before and sitting at the end of the counter and ordering the sort of hard whiskey she’d usually save for drinking alone at home—but is what’s happening here even close to sharing?

_You don’t mind that I’m teaching her. Do you?_

And Matthew’s face, the angles of it, ripping itself to shreds. _No, I don’t._

_If you’d rather me leave you alone—_

_No_ , she’d said, _no_ , because—she doesn’t even know why, if it had been anyone else she would have screamed them out of the apartment, if it had been _anyone_ else she probably would have been hissing and spitting and clawing at them, but it was Lewis, it was _Darcy_ (orange peel tangles at the base of her tongue) and she hadn’t said a word, she _hadn’t_ told her to get out, to leave, to not come back. She’d asked her to stay. She’d stuck her nose in Elektra’s business and she’d pushed back and dug in with both hands and the _viciousness_ in her when she’d been on the phone—it’d been so sharp and clear that it’d knocked the breath out of her.

_You either stop bothering her, or we make you stop._

_You’re not insane._

No, Elektra doesn’t share. She _doesn’t share._ Not when something’s hers.

 _Mine._ It’s something more than want. A sudden, furious greed. _Mine._ She needs them, not just him but _them,_ different people who prop her up between them and—and she’s not even sure, she can’t breathe, the realization of it slams into her so hard it knocks the air out of her lungs, because _I belong to no one, no man or woman or family or clan,_ but God, the greed won’t cease, it won’t leave her. Matthew is _hers._ And she thinks—she knows. She wants Darcy to be hers. She wants to mark her all over and bite and claw and scrape. She _wants_ it. _We’re different, the three of us._ Darcy Lewis might not know it, but she’s as different as they are, as vibrant and as real. She’s someone like them, dark and wild, a person who can walk with shadows and touch blades like a lover and can still reach out and build and _love_ , and Elektra wants that. She wants that with her as much as she wants and needs Matthew with her, at her back, at her side, and Christ, _Matthew_ , he might never have seen but she refuses to believe that some part of Matthew Murdock hasn’t long since recognized some part of Darcy Lewis, even if he doesn’t want to look at it, even if he’s been too careful to ask, and if she could just get him to see it—

“You’re in my Women in Vic Lit class, right?”

Elektra turns on her stool. She doesn’t know his face, this person who’s appeared out of nowhere, in a bar where she’s supposed to be anonymous. The lights are too dim for her to make out much of his features. He’s pretty, she thinks, but in a forgettable way, in an I-won’t-remember-your-face-the-next-morning kind of way. He rests his hand to the counter by her glass.

“Am I?” she says, vaguely, and looks back down at her drink. He shakes his head once, laughing like she’s made a joke, and Elektra can’t work out why he hasn’t seen how coiled she is, yet, how much she wants to dig her nails into his eyes. When she looks up, the bartender—he’s a big man, black, young for what he’s doing—is wiping a glass out with the sort of careful slowness that means he’s paying attention to every word.

“Yeah, you sit like—I think three rows in front of me.” He’s still standing too close. Every nerve in her body is screaming. _Hurt him. Do it._ “Your name’s Elektra, right?”

She can’t even speak. Elektra stares at him, unsmiling, and he falters a little. He looks so young, she thinks. They have to be in the same year—juniors and sophomores don’t get into Women in Vic Lit, _ever_ —but he looks so young. Like a child.

“You wanna come and sit with us?” he says, and gestures over his shoulder to his friends. There are three of them, all men. They don’t look away from her when she stares, laughing a little like she’s making a joke by refusing to respond. “Buy you a drink?”

“No,” Elektra says, flatly. “I’m not drinking with you. And I’m not going to fuck any of you, either, so I suppose you’re out of luck.”

“Whoa, okay.” He doesn’t draw back from her, even as she finishes her drink, gets off the barstool. “That is _not—_ look. Just looking to be friendly and buy you a drink, that’s all.”

“I don’t do friendly.”

“Everyone does friendly sometimes,” he says, and he’s laughing again. Either he’s drunker than he looks, or he’s actually so stupid as to think she’s playing. Elektra watches him, unblinking. The bartender clears his throat, but the guy talking to her, he doesn’t look away from her face.

“I don’t,” says Elektra again.  

He doesn’t catch the hint. “Okay. So. Am I right in thinking your friends call you E?”

It hits her like a static shock. “I would stop, if I were you.”

“Just—” He slides a hand around her waist. “C’mon, E, don’t—”

Elektra doesn’t actually consciously decide to move. She just does. She slips her hand around his thumb, twists back, turns. The guy yelps. When she pushes, she has him on his knees on the ground with his arm torqued backwards and sideways, and all it took was her fingers curled around his stupid thumb. She wants to snap his arm in half, ram her knee into the soft, crushable parts underneath his chin. She’s breathing fast and her blood is smoking and she wants to _hurt_ him, she _could,_ why shouldn’t she hurt him when he’s put his hands on her and pushed and pushed and _pushed_ —

 _Elektra,_ someone says. Her or him, she doesn’t know. An echo. _E._

She stays still.

“Don’t touch me,” she says, in a voice that is much more even and much less human than she wants. “Don’t _ever_ touch me.”

The guy wriggles, and she snaps his thumb. She doesn’t think about it. He goes to move, shifts his weight, and suddenly there’s a cracking under her hand. He lets out a noise like a stuck pig, and she lets him go so he can press his hand to his chest, protectively. The bar’s gone quiet. Elektra grabs her coat, folds it over her arm. When she steps away, people scatter.

She stops a yard from the door.

“Don’t touch me.” She curls her hands into fists. “And don’t you ever— _ever_ call me E.”

She’s gone before anyone can come up with a response.

.

.

.

After that, things get weird.

Well, not weird, exactly. She wouldn’t call this _weird._ Weird is dancing the tarantella on a balcony naked and covered in caramel while the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is going on down below. Weird is waking up wearing someone else’s underwear and not being entirely certain how it happened but knowing that you definitely don’t remember getting home last night. Weird is eating potato chips with wasabi on them, _Foggy._

So, no, she wouldn’t call this weird. She definitely wouldn’t call this weird. But she wouldn’t call it normal, either, because it’s not—it’s not exactly _normal_ to spend most of your time with your best friend and his girlfriend (who is also your friend, somehow, impossibly, astoundingly) without it being a group event. It’s not normal to have it _become_ normal, to go from the gym to Elektra’s apartment or to  Jen’s or somewhere else entirely, walking around with Matt between her and Elektra and not feeling like a third wheel.

(She does feel like a third wheel on occasion, but she thinks—she _knows_ they go out of their way to make sure she doesn’t, most of the time. They want her there, for some reason, and she’s never seen Matt as happy as he is with Elektra, and she’s more than all right with the three of them being close because she’s pretty sure E’s not going away anytime soon. Just…sometimes one of them gets this oddly carnivorous look, like they want to swallow the other person whole. It’s something that she’s never seen on Matt, something that settles so deep into Elektra’s face it’s like it’s woven into her skin, and Darcy usually excuses herself after that. It stings a little too close to her heart to be comfortable, when they look like that.)

She knows Foggy thinks it’s strange, though. She also knows that Foggy’s lonely, because Jesus Christ, _she_ ’ _s_ lonely sometimes. She misses the way it’s always been, her and Foggy and Matt, and having that change—it’s a pounding kind of pain, like a tattooing needle gun dragged across your spine. It makes her toes curl and her eyes burn because _God_ , it’s phantom limbs and empty spaces and that’s—she’s not sure what she is if she doesn’t have _Matt-Darcy-Foggy_ in the back of her head. And Foggy doesn’t like Elektra, which makes it worse. So Darcy cuts back a little on the gym (at least, during the day) and starts dragging Foggy out to old haunts, because she never, never wants him to think that they’re leaving him, either of them. That’s hard to say, when the fundamental physics of the world seems to be changing, when the tapestry they had is being amended to fold E into it too. Foggy doesn’t like E, and E doesn’t seem to think much about Foggy at all, which breaks her heart. But yeah, Foggy thinks it’s like… _It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia_ weird.

“Can I be really honest with you about something?” Foggy says one morning, as they’re walking back from class to Carman Hall. Darcy heaves her messenger bag higher up over one shoulder, snapping out of her daze of Constitutional studies. “Like—really honest. Like _Foggy, why the hell would you ask me that_ honest.”

“I mean, sure?” She folds her fingers over the strap of her bag. “Have you never not been really honest with me? Because if you haven’t, we gon’ have words.”

“No, but—this is really, really honest, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Spit it out, Foggy,” says Darcy. She’s laughing. “Seriously, don’t worry, just like—say the thing.”

Foggy’s eyes drop down to her hands. Darcy doesn’t notice the bruising on them anymore, really. They’re faded most days now, since she’s built up callus and stopped hitting the bag wrong. Still, there are purple blotches between the knuckles on her right hand that make her think of inkstains. She cocks her head at him, waiting.

“Why do you like her?” he says. “Elektra. Like—what is it about her that you like?”

“She’s a badass who takes no shit?” Darcy resettles her bag again. “Why do you ask? Is it because you guys don’t get along, or—?”

“It’s not that.” Foggy makes an impatient noise. “Just, like—Matt I kind of get, because he’s always been…you know how he is with pretty girls that have a streak of, I dunno. That bad boy-esque devil-may-care give-no-fucks kinda thing. But you’ve never really liked any of the girls Matt’s dated before, and just—I was wondering why this one was different.”

“Well, she’s lasted way longer than the others, first of all,” Darcy says, but her heart is beating faster, for some reason, enough that it stings against her lungs. “It’s been like four months, Foggy, that says a lot.”

“I mean, yeah, but that’s…not really what I’m asking.” He sighs. “Just—I don’t know what’s been going on, but you’ve—you’ve _never_ really spent all that much time with Matt’s dates because like…I don’t know. Whatever reason. We’re his friends, they’re the flavor of the month, whatever, they’re going to cycle around and we _know_ that, but you’re—you really seem to like her. And I don’t get why.”

“Is this that thing about Elektra being a rattlesnake again?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Foggy bursts out, and stops walking. “She _is_ , she’s—she’s dangerous, okay, and I don’t get why the pair of you don’t _see_ that, because like—I wouldn’t trust her to save a baby from a burning building, but Matt’s with her half the time and when he’s not, you are, and sometimes the pair of you just like…disappear or go talk to her or _whatever_ and I just don’t—I don’t understand it, okay? I don’t. Not with you. Matt, I—I can kind of see it, why, but definitely not with you.” He swallows, and then says, “So just—can you try and explain it? Because I don’t—I don’t see her that often, but from what I _have_ seen, I just—I don’t get it.”

Darcy stares at the sidewalk, at the pitted scrapes and the cracks and the puddle a few squares down. Foggy looks…not lonely, exactly. Alone. Alone but not quite lonely, realizing that for some reason he’s been excluded and he can’t quite work out why, and she wants to wipe that look off his face. _You matter,_ she thinks, and swallows. _You matter too, Foggy, don’t—please don’t think that you don’t._

“I guess—” There’s a bottlecap a few feet away. Darcy swipes at it with her shoe. “I mean, I can’t speak for Matt.”

Foggy waves that off. “I don’t need you to speak for Matt. I just—you explain. Maybe—maybe if you explain it, I’ll understand.”

The thing is, she’s not sure she _can_ explain. Darcy drops down onto the bench, and dumps her bag on the ground. Foggy doesn’t sit. He stands there, thumbs hooked through the straps of his backpack, watching her.

“Did you, um. Did you ever read _Jane Eyre,_ Foggy?”

He blinks so fast he could be a camera shutter. “That’s—that’s the book Elektra likes, isn’t it? The one she wants to write her thesis on?”

She’s honestly surprised Foggy even remembers that, but she nods. “Yeah, um. I’ve been rereading it. I read it in high school, but like—I wanted to remind myself what happens.”

“I mean, I read it too, it was…basically my worst enemy in AP Lit, but like—what the hell does a nineteenth century gothic novel have to do with anything?”

“I’m just—I’m trying to explain it in a way that makes sense.” Darcy tugs off her hat, and folds it between her fingers. “In—in _Jane Eyre,_ Jane is going to marry her boss, the—the guardian of the girl she’s a governess too. But he already has a wife, Bertha Mason, and—and Bertha spends all her time locked in the attic because people say she’s crazy. _Bertha Mason is mad, and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations._ ” She takes a breath. “There’s—she’s insane, according to the narrative, and Mr. Rochester can’t divorce her because of she’s not of sound mind. She tries to kill him all the time, and when Jane comes to the house at Thornfield she scares the unholy shit out of her, and she attacks people with knives and just—she’s nuts.”

Foggy rocks, back and forth. Then he sits down on the bench next to her. “What does that have to do with Elektra?”

“Elektra thinks that Bertha Mason is—there are loads of interpretations of Bertha Mason. She’s a metaphor for the societal strangulation of women, she’s—she’s a metaphor for the female sex drive or the economic chains that separate Jane Eyre and Rochester or a mirror for Jane and her own—her own passion and strong will and all of that. But—but Elektra thinks—and I don’t know if this has been said before, she says she’s never seen it as an interpretation but who knows, thousands of people have analyzed Bertha over the years—Elektra thinks that Bertha Mason isn’t Jane’s passion. She thinks that Bertha Mason is Jane’s _anger._ ” Darcy heaves a breath. “Elektra looked at Jane Eyre and she looked at Bertha Mason and said yes, these two women—they’re mirrored, they’re reflections of each other, but as a literary tool, Bertha Mason isn’t just Jane’s—Jane’s energy or her curiosity or whatever. She’s a representation of all the anger that Jane has pushed back, all her life. She’s a mechanism for the expression of it. Because like…Jane’s been treated like shit for years by her family, she—the one friend she ever had died when she was little and she’s in a position where she can’t really make _anything_ of herself, rather than being a governess, and on top of everything the one guy she’s ever loved lied to her. And in the book, when Rochester shows Bertha to the whole wedding party, Jane doesn’t—Jane doesn’t do a thing, she’s too shocked, but Bertha Mason jumps at him. She wants to strangle him. She wants to kill him. And that’s—I mean, if a guy told me they loved me, and said they wanted to marry me, and on the morning of the wedding it comes out that not only does he still have a wife but that wife is living _in the attic_ and like…comes through and tears up wedding veils and tries to stab people or whatever, I’d be pretty fucking pissed too. Rochester’s a douchebag, realtalk.”

He digests that, for a while. Foggy leans back on his hands, shucks his backpack and stows it between his feet. When Darcy leans into his arm, rests her head on his shoulder, he knocks his cheek against her scalp absently. “So,” he says, finally, “so—Elektra is your Bertha Mason?”

“Elektra—” Her throat works. She twists her hands together, drawing the pompom through the space between her forefinger and thumb. “Foggy, Elektra is her own Bertha Mason. She takes all her anger, everything inside her that isn’t—isn’t status quo, and she flaunts it. She doesn’t—I mean, there’s a lot she doesn’t talk about, and a lot that she doesn’t _want_ to talk about, but she’s never once lied about how she is. She’s—she’s wild, and violent, and yeah, that makes her dangerous, but that—that kind of dangerous, that’s not scary to me. She’s _brave_ , to me. Because she takes everything that other people keep inside and she wears it on the outside and she doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks of her, not ever, not if people hate her. And that—that knowledge of who she is and what she can do, she wears that, and because of that some people—a lot of people, and they’re—they’re not entirely wrong, let’s be honest—think that she’s terrifying. It frightens people because of the line between truth and politeness, of—of regular and not, she’s just…stepped over it.  She’s different, and she’s real, and she’s honest about all of it. She’s never once lied to me. And—and sometimes, I think—she makes sense in a way that’s impossible to explain. To me. I don’t—I don’t know how else to explain it, Foggy, I’m sorry. Just—I understand her, and I didn’t expect to, and—and that’s why I still talk to her. That’s why I like her. That’s—that’s why.”

Foggy doesn’t pull away from her. He sits there, thinking, breathing, in and out, and Darcy waits. Her hands are shaking a little as she stretches out her hat, further and further. “What does Matt think?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. And—and Matt doesn’t have anything to do with it really. There are parts of her that—that I _get_ , Foggy. There are parts of her that—that I have, and that I don’t talk about, for—for so many reasons, you have no idea, but that—that _rage,_ that makes sense to me. That _makes sense._ I understand what she is and I’m—I’m not scared of it. And she’s never made me want to be scared of it. I don’t know if Matt sees the same thing, or if—or if this is just me being weird or whatever, but that’s what _I_ see. I understand her. And—and it’s not necessarily a good thing that I do, because that’s…that makes me dangerous too.”

“You’re not dangerous,” Foggy says immediately. “You’re—Darcy, you’re not dangerous.”

“Yeah,” she says, and knocks into his shoulder. “Not to you, anyway.”

That trips him. Foggy blinks, and blinks again, turning to look at his hands. His skin is too dry, and she makes a mental note to slip a thing of lotion into his bag with a note that says _for Christ’s sake, stop bleeding on your goddamn homework_. He looks pale, and blotchy, like a carpet’s been yanked out from under him and he can’t find his balance again.

“I think I can understand that,” he says. “I don’t—I don’t think I’m ever gonna like her, but she—she promised me she’d do anything to not hurt either of you, and just—that’s something I can trust. If she’s as honest as you say she is, then I can live with that, definitely. It’s just—” His voice breaks. “You _vanish._ You both do. You’re acting like you’re—you’re hiding something, and I used to think that I understood what it was. But—but I don’t anymore, if that’s—if that’s what Elektra’s like. You’re hiding something, and I know she’s wrapped up in it, and just—I don’t understand her and I don’t understand any of it, because it’s like I don’t even know either of you anymore. And—and I don’t like it. Feeling like that.”

Oil burns in her throat. Darcy turns, and says, “Foggy, look at me.”

He doesn’t move. She thinks of Elektra all of a sudden, silent and still. Then he brushes his hair back up out of his face and he meets her eyes, red-eyed and teary, and _God,_ she hates herself. She turns sideways, and takes both his hands, holding on.

“You,” she says, “are not going _anywhere._ All right? Just—I’m not going anywhere, and Matt’s not going anywhere, and you’re not going anywhere. This—this thing, with Matt and Elektra, and her and me being friends, that doesn’t mean that I’m ever going to stop being _your_ friend, and basically your roommate, and—and whatever you want me to be, Foggy, for as long as you want me there. You’ve—you and Matt were the first—you’re the best friends I’ve ever had, and I don’t ever want that to change. I don’t—I don’t _ever_ want to lose that. She’s not your replacement, Foggy. She’s—she’s just a part of the patchwork now, that’s all. And if she leaves, or if she stays, you—you and me, we don’t change. We’re never, ever going to change, okay? So don’t—don’t think that, please.” She smiles a little, her vision blurring. “Foggy—Foggy, you’d probably have to kill me to get me to go away at this point, so just—shut up. Okay?” 

Foggy makes a little strangled sound like a bitten-off sob, and shuts his eyes. He takes deep breaths, in and out through his nose. When Darcy puts her arms around him, squeezing tight around the ribs, he hugs her so hard that her spine pops. There are people passing them on the sidewalk, giving them weird looks. Darcy ignores them.

“Just—” He swallows. “Just be careful. Please. I might—if she’s not with him, then she’s with you, and if you’re not with me, then you’re with them, and I don’t—Jesus, I might be going crazy.”

“Like that’s a far slide.”

He doesn’t pinch her. He doesn’t even seem to notice. Foggy pulls back just enough to look her in the face, grab her by the shoulders and hold her there, like he thinks she might run. “ _Be careful_ ,” he says. “Just—just be careful.  I don’t—I really don’t want you to get hurt.”

She has no idea what to say to that. Darcy makes herself smile a little. “Foggy, how am I gonna get hurt?”

Foggy presses his lips together. Then he kisses her forehead, and gets up, wiping his face on the edge of his sleeve. “Come on,” he says. “This—this is an ice cream day. I need like…ten pounds of it.”

“This I am cool with,” Darcy says, and slips her arm through his.

(A few hours later, she calls Matt, and leaves a message on his cell phone. It’s only a few seconds long.

“Hey, it’s me. Talk to Foggy, okay? He’s—you need to talk to Foggy.”)

.

.

.

Elektra calls her father back at two minutes to midnight, with Matthew asleep in her bed and the curtains drawn back to show off the lights of the city. She’s stopped turning on the lights, past sunset. The ‘scrapers are bright enough to light the flat the way she wants it lit, and besides, it’s not like she needs anything on for Matthew.

Darcy’s not here, for once—she’s at her cousin’s, Nelson with her, handling some kind of plumbing issue that the building super is too lazy to get off his ass and fix. She’d spent all evening sending Elektra snapchats of Nelson getting sink water sprayed right in his face, with messages like _he said he was good at this_ and _he’s mad I don’t know diffs b/t wrenches_. It’s amusing, oddly. Mostly it just gives her a chance to finish this, without Darcy being there.

(She wants Darcy there, though, which is a little infuriating, because _how dare you make me need you_ is mixed up with _come back, come back_ and it’s like she’s being tugged in two completely different directions with no end in sight—)

She almost doesn’t expect her father to pick up. It’s the last ring before the messaging system picks up, she thinks, when she hears a click, and quiet. Maybe a little bit of breathing, she’s not sure. She doesn’t say anything, just waits, until finally her father releases a breath. “You’re not even going to say hello?”

“I figured you would, first.” Elektra curls into the armchair. She’s not sure if this will wake Matthew up, but if it does, then she can at least trust him not to interfere. Darcy’s left a throw blanket draped over the back of the chair, and when she pulls it over her knees, she catches a hint of curry. “I didn’t call to argue with you,” she says, in Greek, just in case Matthew _does_ wake up. Her father switches over without noticing, rolling into the vowels. 

“Tell your girlfriend not to do that, then.”

Elektra presses her cheek to the upholstery of the chair. “You’re leaving her out of this.”

“Arguably,” says her father, in the mild sort of voice that reminds her of broiling clouds, “I could have her arrested for threatening me.”

“You could,” says Elektra, equally mild. “But you won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not that stupid. You know what I can do to you if you try it.”

Silence from the phone. Then he sighs again, loudly. “At least you remember that much.”

“Like I could forget it.” It’s too cold and dry outside to snow, but she thinks the clouds might be building into a thunderstorm. It’s stormed so much since she’s come to New York, like the city’s trying to match her moods. “I’m sure you have people watching me, so I’ll say this, and there’s not going to be a discussion. You leave them alone, Papa. I’ll help you at events, if I can, but you leave them out of it. Both of them.”

“Does either one know you’re fucking the other?” says her father. “It doesn’t seem like they do.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Have you told them you’re sick?”

She pulls the phone away from her ear, looks at it for a moment. Then she settles it back again. “They know.”

“That’s not the same as you telling them.”

“I’m not talking about this with you,” she says. “You leave them alone. That’s not optional. You leave them alone, you leave them _entirely_ out of whatever you want me to do, and I’ll help you, if I’m able. If you don’t, then you don’t see me. I don’t speak to you. In fact, I will make such an enormous spectacle of myself that none of our friends in Greece will want to associate with you, and no one, not in Washington or in New York, will want anything to do with us here.” She lifts her head, and looks at the clouds. “Are we clear?”

She can only hear him breathing, for a minute. Then he says, “You’re in love with one of them.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I’m just…surprised.”

“You didn’t think it was possible,” says Elektra, very quiet, and the fact that he doesn’t respond says everything. She swallows.

( _He’s your father._ _That doesn’t mean you have to let him hurt you._ )

(But the thing is, she can’t do what Darcy did, because yes, she’s hurt, and yes, he’s the one that did it, and yes, yes, yes, he’s the one who forgot her and he’s the one who uses her and he’s the one she can never trust, but he’s also her father. Not her father, but _her_ father, and Elektra doesn’t let go. Not of the people she’s claimed.)

“You haven’t answered my question,” she says. “You leave them alone, entirely alone, and I help you. You don’t, I won’t. Are we clear?”

“We’re clear.”

“Excellent.” Elektra unfolds herself from the chair. “I want two weeks’ notice for any event you want me at, and I reserve the right to veto. Good night, Papa.”

She hangs up before he can respond.

Elektra doesn’t like being held as she sleeps. Still, when she slides back into the bed, pulls the blanket up over her shoulder, Matthew—he’s half-awake, she thinks, barely enough to really move much—hooks his fingers into the waistband of her pajama pants, and she doesn’t shove his hand off. “All okay?”

“It’s fine,” she says. It is, somehow. She touches her fingertips to the hollow of his throat. “I’m all right.”

His mouth curves. Then he closes his eyes again. He’s asleep in seconds, she thinks. Elektra rests her fingers to his lips, and watches him for a while. Even when she tries, she can’t look away.

.

.

.

Sometimes it feels as if their lives swing on a fulcrum, a swaying back and forth, ups and downs. It makes her think of the prisoner in Edgar Allen Poe’s story, knowing that the pendulum is descending, listening to the rats, to the edge of the blade cutting the air and unable to do a thing about it. With them, though, Elektra thinks, it’s not death that the blade is bringing. It’s fraying through whatever rope that’s holding Darcy back.

It’s arguable that she’s trapping Darcy Lewis into exposing herself, but Elektra refuses to say that they’re corrupting her. There’s nothing in her to corrupt. She is what she’s always been, Elektra thinks, is what she’s always hidden. The thing that the blade is cutting into is the disguise. It’s doing the same to her, to the smile she’s coached herself into since she was thirteen; it’s doing the same to Matthew, dragging him out, more and more with each passing day. He hasn’t exposed himself, he’s still miles away from it, but he’s less...the word is guarded, she thinks. He’s a little more open, sometimes, if only in his expressions. She’s not sure Darcy has noticed, but Elektra has, and every time she catches a hint of the shadow in his mouth she wants to touch it with the tip of her tongue.

One night, Elektra takes them to Luke’s bar. It’s the first time she’s been back since she snapped the boy’s thumb, and though Luke gives her a raised-eyebrow look and says, “Don’t break any more bones,” he doesn’t throw her out. (Darcy doesn’t ask, but she does give Elektra a look that’s verging on the edge of predatory, and Matthew touches his fingers to the small of her back in a _tell me later_.) There’s one booth in the back that’s free, and Luke gestures them over to it without a word, but as Matthew turns, his cane out, someone knocks hard into his shoulder. It’s a student, Elektra thinks. Grad or undergrad, she’s not sure. White and smelling strongly of hair gel. There are two of them, and it’s the taller one that knocked into Matthew, the taller one who rears back like he’s the one that’s been clocked.

“Watch it, Helen Keller,” snaps the taller one, and everything in her _revolts._ Elektra nearly bares her teeth, because _no_ and _mine_ and _you don’t do that, you don’t insult him_ , but Matthew digs his fingers into her arm hard enough to bruise. She’s not sure if that makes her angrier, or settles her down. Maybe both.

Darcy, though. Darcy stands very still at the end of the bar, watching the men go. Then, carefully, she says. “I’ll be back.”

Matthew presses his lips together. “Darcy, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“You don’t need to do anything. It’s okay.”

“The fucking hell it’s okay,” says Darcy. She’s yards out of reach before Elektra can think to move. Matthew hisses through clenched teeth, stuck holding his cane and behind his glasses and trapped in his human skin. Elektra doesn’t have that. She draws her arm out of Matthew’s grip.

“E.”

“I’m not going to do anything,” she says. “I’m just going to make sure she doesn’t do something she’ll regret later.”

“ _You’re_ going to make sure.”

“I’m occasionally capable of that.”

Matthew flickers, and the corner of his mouth lifts. He sits down. “Don’t hurt them too badly.”

She sets her lips to a rough spot on his jaw. Elektra pulls back before he can do anything about it. “I really think I’m not the one you have to be worried about hurting people right now.”

Judging by the look on his face as she leaves, she’s right.

The frat boys have aimed straight for the pool table. Darcy collects a drink from Luke, thanking him quietly, before following them. She’s still holding onto it when she boosts herself up onto the nearest table, watching them without comment. It takes a minute before the taller one notices that she’s staring. He stops, straightening up, and a few yards back Elektra (she’s settled herself against the bar, elbows against the countertop and her back turned to the counter, watching and waiting) stills, and coils to spring. “You have a problem?” he says to Darcy, and she just—she _beams_ at him.

“Nah,” she says. “Just wanted to tell you that I really, you know, admired what you said back there, about Helen Keller. It was pretty great, if you ask me.”

He blinks. Elektra doesn’t need to look to hard to see the way Darcy is holding herself—it’s the same thing she sees when they’re in the gym, and she’s getting pissed that she can’t land a hit; the same tightly wound needlepoint focus that she sees in Matthew sometimes, out on the street. Anger snapped back under a leash. The taller one leans back, away from the pool table. “Oh, really.”

“Yeah,” says Darcy, bright and chipper and vicious. “It was the exact kind of reprehensibly ableist, prissy white boy rhetoric that gets me all hot and bothered. Where on earth have you been all my life, you sexy beast?”

Elektra chokes. She actually gags on her drink, and has to put it down and cover her mouth with the back of her hand to keep herself from coughing. By the time she’s caught her breath, the kid with the pool cue has stepped away from the table. He’s cracking six feet, which means that in her flats, Darcy is about nine inches shorter than him. From behind, it looks like she’s facing down a titan. The bartender, Luke, is watching with carefully shaded eyes. Elektra’s fairly certain he’s prepping to come over the top of the counter if he has to.

Which, she thinks, as Darcy shifts her weight and gets ready, he probably won’t. But it’s nice of him to think about it.

“What the fuck.” The student looks legitimately flabbergasted. Elektra bites the inside of her cheek. “I’m not prissy.”

“No, you’re just another white jackass who managed to find his ass with both hands and started thinking he was real hot shit.” She gives him a cutting look, head to toes, and shakes her hair back out of her face. “Lemme guess—you’d date an Asian because she’s submissive, you voted for Romney because Obama’s a Nazi socialist, and you think all the gay guys on your high school sports team were spying on you in the changing room. Believe me, kiddo, they really weren’t.”

He laughs. There’s anger in the lines of his arms, in the stiffness of his back. “Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

“Aw, you _do_ care.” She flutters her eyelashes at him. “So nice to see there’s some humanity left in the world, don’t you say?”

 “I’d say your retard boyfriend could fight his own battles if he had any balls,” says the student. “You really want to do this here?”

“I don’t know,” says Darcy. “Do you?”

He looks at her for a time. Then he scoffs. He shifts his pool cue, points it at her. “Let’s get something straight, here, you stupid bitch—”

She can actually _see_ it when Darcy loses her temper, a popping in the back of her neck like a bone snapping. Darcy slides sideways, out of the way of the cue—he wasn’t trying to hit her, Elektra doesn’t think, but from this side, it sure as hell looks like he was—and punches him once, hard, in the solar plexus. She loses her grip on her glass, and it shatters on the floor between her feet. When he’s gagging, she knocks him to the ground, and kicks the cue away. She does it with about as much effort as snapping a toothpick, and when she straightens, hooking her bangs out of her eyes, she’s freezing cold. Elektra slips away from the counter, stops about three feet out of Darcy’s reach. The bartender’s on his way, too, and he rests on the balls of his feet, watching her with sharp eyes.

“You okay, miss?” he says, slowly. Not because he’s unsure, Elektra thinks. Because he wants to make sure he doesn’t piss her off, too.

“I’m fine,” Darcy says. She steps away from the guy on the ground. His friend, the short one, is frozen to the floor. “I can pay for the glass.”

Luke rocks back onto his heels. He sucks his teeth. “Nah,” he says, finally. “Saw what happened. Just don’t fight in my bar again. If you do, you’re not coming back.”

“Can do,” Darcy says, and then she catches Elektra watching her. Blood flushes crimson into her cheeks, blooming like fire. She ducks her head. “E.”

“Darcy,” says Elektra. She holds out her hand, cocking an eyebrow in a command. “You’re done?”

“Yeah, I’m done.”

When Darcy takes her hand, Elektra weaves their fingers together. Darcy chokes a little bit, but she doesn’t let go. When Elektra pulls her close into her and puts her mouth to Darcy’s ear, she doesn’t pull back from that, either. “Prissy white boy?”

“Did you see his shirt?” Darcy says, and she starts to shake. Not from adrenalin. It’s laughter. There’s satisfaction rolling through her like a drumbeat, and it makes the hair on the back of Elektra’s neck stand on end. “Designer, but unbuttoned. Bob Marley marijuana patterned shirt underneath. Only white boy that does that is the prissy fuckbro kind, the ones that think they’re _super_ liberal but they’re actually just gross douchefucks. Easy target.”

Elektra can’t help it. She smiles, baring her teeth. She still hasn’t stepped back, hasn’t stopped whispering, and she can feel it when Darcy shivers at the scrape of tooth and lip against the curve of her ear. “You could have hurt him much worse.”

“I could have.” She’s just a little husky, now, even if she’s trying not to show it. Something flushes warm through the veins in Elektra’s arms, down into her hands and feet, a supernova in her skin. “But the thing is, I like this bar.”

She’s still laughing when they get back to the table, when Matthew reaches up and catches Darcy’s sleeve and pulls her down to say something mixed up between _you’re okay_ and _you didn’t have to do that_. There’s something else tangled in it this time, though. She’d startled him, Elektra thinks, watching them. The abruptness of it. The viciousness of it. She’d startled him.

 _There you go,_ she thinks, as Matthew touches his fingertips to the back of Darcy’s hand. _Now you know what I see, I think._

Darcy says something chipper and flaky, and then goes off to get a new drink. Matthew doesn’t speak, but when Elektra reaches out to him, when she scrapes her nails into the hair at the back of his head, he makes a little sound like an angry cat. There’s nothing for her to say. Besides, even if there was, he’s too wrapped up in his own thoughts to hear it.

She puts Darcy between them, her and Matthew. The booth is circular, and she shunts Darcy into the middle of it. Darcy doesn’t seem to notice until Elektra slides in behind her, knocking into her with her hip and pushing her closer into Matthew, until Elektra rests her leg to Darcy’s, hip to ankle. Then she stops, very suddenly, and takes a breath. She doesn’t say anything, but Elektra’s fairly sure that there’s color in her cheeks that can’t be thrown away with the alcohol, and every time Elektra turns to say something into Darcy’s ear (about people in the bar, about anything, really) Darcy trembles a little, every single time.

Matthew listens to everything, and says nothing at all.

.

.

.

Two weeks later, a girl gets raped.

It’s no one they know. Her name’s Shaniqua Bergowitz, and she’s in the art department. Matt can’t remember ever crossing paths with her, and he doesn’t think the rest of them have, either, but the whole campus is talking about it. It’s not a rumor, not a whisper, it’s a wildfire, because Shaniqua Bergowitz does not sit down. Shaniqua Bergowitz does not keep quiet. Shaniqua Berkowitz gets a megaphone, and Shaniqua Bergowitz stands in front of the Columbia Law Library and she tells her story every hour until security comes to take her away.

The student she’s accusing is named Tom Allerdyne. Matt doesn’t know him, either, but Elektra’s come across him once or twice. They’ve known each other for years, Shaniqua says. She trusted him. He’s popular, and she knows no one will believe her, but she’s speaking out anyway. She comes forward, and when Matt passes her and her megaphone accidentally-on-purpose one day he can smell the bruising under her dark skin, the blood from cracked scabs. He can hear the way she walks, and he knows she’s telling the truth.

It feels like a hard knot of metal underneath his skin, constantly scraping away at the insides of his clothes, at his veins. Tom Allerdyne has a lawyer, and he’s suing Shaniqua Bergowitz. Tom Allerdyne is white and popular and charismatic, and Shaniqua Bergowitz is black and quiet and a little bit shy. Tom Allerdyne has money. Shaniqua Bergowitz is a scholarship student like Matt, a full ride with her talent for sculpting. Tom Allerdyne is going to get away with it, and Shaniqua Bergowitz is going to have to live with that knowledge for the rest of her life.

It’s not a question that they go after him.

They don’t say anything, either of them. They tend not to speak when they’re hunting; there’s nothing to say, and voices are identifiable, recognizable. But Elektra’s _burning,_ and it’s not the kind of burn that makes his throat hurt and his heart stumble. It’s the scream of a wind tunnel, the sudden dark canyon of a sunspot, consuming and devastating and skeletal.  They wait for Tom Allerdyne to leave his dormitory, and they track him, back and forth through shadows until he’s broken off from his group, headphones in, whistling to himself in time with the music. It’s a song that’s been popular, lately, that a lot of the students have been playing across campus, but he can barely hear it through the buzzing in his ears. Next to him on the fire escape, Elektra sighs, and slithers through the railings to land almost soundlessly behind Allerdyne.

She sweeps his legs out from under him in one smooth motion. Allerdyne yelps; his iPod skitters off underneath a garbage can. Matt follows her, and seizes Allerdyne by the collar of his shirt, snapping out his arm and letting go. Allerdyne hits the wall with a crack, too startled to fight. Two against one isn’t something they do, not typically, but Elektra’s _angry_ , Matt’s _angry_ , and here’s part of the reason for it, fear-sweat and too much aftershave, nose already bloody.

He doesn’t remember most of it. He remembers blood flecking against Elektra’s teeth. He remembers the snap of a bone under his elbow. He remembers—Christ, what does he remember. He remembers the way that Shaniqua Bergowitz had been dragged off by security and the next morning reappeared in front of the library with her megaphone, unbowed. He remembers Elektra laughing, low in the back of her throat. He remembers Allerdyne saying _please_ , over and over and over.

He remembers telling the man _no_.

(When they leave, when they find a hidden corner and Elektra kisses him, hissing, he can taste blood on her tongue, and her hands leave smears as they snake up underneath his shirt—)

The next morning it’s in the _Bulletin. Alleged Columbia rapist hospitalized_. The injury count’s not detailed in the papers, but he knows it, intimately. Broken nose. Broken jaw. Snapped ribs. Dislocated shoulder. A compound fracture to his right leg. He talks about two assailants, claims that one of them was a woman. No one’s blamed Shaniqua, but her picture’s in the papers. There are reporters crowding the law library, waiting to talk to her. The NYPD is scrambling to cover their asses, because Shaniqua had a rape kit done days ago, and no one’s done a thing with it. When Allerdyne’s arrested, more women come out of the woodwork. A freshman girl he’d met at a party. A sophomore who’d been paired off with him for class. His roommate’s girlfriend. More and more and more. They share the megaphone with Shaniqua, and the law library turns into a little shrine, a little awareness group, a little campaign that grows bigger and bigger with each passing day. Columbia’s looking into the matter, and there’s a lot of shade being thrown, not just at Allerdyne, but at the administration. _Call a rapist a rapist,_ reads a sign. Foggy whispers it to him as they pass. _Down with respondent. Call a rapist what they are._ The whole campus is buzzing, Elektra’s slinking through space, Foggy’s shaking his head at _goddamn vigilante justice, how does this help anyone?_ and Darcy—

Darcy’s quiet.

She’s quiet for days, about Shaniqua, about Tom Allerdyne, about everything. She’s been quiet for a while, if he thinks about it. Since after she asked him to talk to Foggy (and they haven’t talked, not exactly, but Foggy had said “I talked to Darcy,” and Matt had said “I know,” and Foggy had said “I don’t get what the hell her appeal is, but Darcy likes her, and you like her, and I guess that ought to be enough at the moment, but Matt, if either of you get hurt because of this I will go so Karate Kid you have no fucking clue,” which isn’t a solution but it’s close enough to one that works without him having to confess all his atrocities, which means that as much as he hates himself for it, Matt doesn’t bring it up again). She’s been quiet and thoughtful and not quite herself, and it reminds him so much of the weeks that E had spent solving her mysterious puzzle that he wonders if this isn’t déjà vu.

He only realizes that it’s not just him who thinks that when Foggy tugs on his sleeve one day, and says, “Hey, do you know what’s going on with Darcy? She’s been kinda weird lately.” And when he dates it back, back and back, he realizes it’s not Shaniqua that’s had Darcy quiet, or Foggy, it’s the bar. She’s been quiet since Luke’s bar.

(Elektra, pushing Darcy into him, in between them, holding on with one hand and smiling a little every time she whispered something in her ear, every time Darcy jumped, and it’s lighter fluid on dry leaves, the flare of it, the rising flames—)

( _She’s different. I like her._ )

_What the hell are you doing, Elektra?_

(He knows what she’s doing. He’s not sure he believes it sometimes, and he’s not going to say anything, not yet, not until he’s certain it won’t break them. But he knows exactly what she’s doing.)

E’s seen it too. She’s drawn back, a little, carefully, the way someone handles a rabid animal. The caution doesn’t end until one day Darcy skips a class. She never skips class, which is why all the alarm bells go off in the back of his head. “I can’t handle it today,” she says, when he calls in the thirty seconds before Hattab has them turn off their cell phones. “Just—I can’t handle people today, okay? Don’t ask.”

She’d hung up before he could say anything more. He doesn’t really hear the lecture.

Elektra sees it, the instant he steps out of the lecture hall, and her lips press thin. She puts her mouth to his cheek, and says in a quiet voice, “Come to the gym with me.”

“Why?”

“You’re worried.” She draws back, and slips her arm through his. “Besides, she’ll probably be there. She knows better than to avoid me.”

He doesn’t want to know how open his face is, right now, that Elektra can pick through his expression and realize exactly what’s going on without him ever having to say anything. He doesn’t want to think about it. Matt weighs his options. The gym is foreign territory, a place he’s intentionally avoided. But—

_I can’t handle people today, okay?_

_Once won’t hurt you,_ he thinks.

“Fine,” he says. “Let’s go.”

They have to stop at Elektra’s apartment, first. “I’m moving,” she says, as she grabs her things, strips off and changes clothes without caring about the floor-to-ceiling glass. “To Greenwich.”

“Seriously?”

“This isn’t my home,” says Elektra. She winds her hair up into a loop at the back of her neck. “Besides, it’ll be easier to sneak out if I live somewhere else.”

“You sneak out?”

(She gives him such a look that Matt has to laugh, and this is why he hasn’t said anything, _this_ is why he doesn’t ask, because he can’t lose this, not either of them, he _can’t—_ )

Darcy shows up at the gym about ten minutes after they do. She comes to a sudden, reverberating stop when she spies Matt, and her eyebrows snap together. Her lip is split, blood beading up on the lower one. There’s a bruise forming on her cheekbone. Frost builds up over his insides. “Please, God,” she says, in a tight voice, “tell me this isn’t an intervention. I skipped _one class_.”

“Do we need to intervene?” Matt says, lightly, and Darcy _cracks._ She snaps her molars together like she’s trying to find something to bite, and strips off her sweatshirt, dumping it next to him on the bench. He’s felt her angry, before, but never this furious. It’s like she’s glowing, radioactive, smearing it everywhere. All over the world. “What happened?”

She digs a roll of bandages and tape out of her bag. “Nothing.”

“Clearly,” says Elektra, watching her. She’s balanced on the balls of her feet. “Darcy.”

“There was nothing.” Darcy yanks so hard on the bandage it nearly tears. “ _Nothing_ happened, E, all right, would you just drop it—”

“You’re bleeding,” Elektra says, and touches her fingers to the space beneath the cut on Darcy’s lip. They come away tacky. “Why are you bleeding?”

“I tripped and fell, all right, just—stop _fussing—_ ”

E starts _buzzing_ , the way she only does when it’s the middle of the night and there’s blood on her teeth. A few bags over, a woman who smells of bergamot and chamomile turns her head to watch them. “Did you fall or were you pushed?”

 _Dark, dark, dark._ Something hisses in his head. _Not her. Not ever her._

“I _was not pushed,_ ” Darcy snaps, and she’s telling the truth, even if she’s so angry she’s basically sparking. “I wasn’t looking and I tripped and fell on the stairs, okay, that’s _all_ , you don’t have to go witch-hunting because I’m a fucking klutz—”

“Darcy,” Matt says, and she freezes. She goes still all over, and her heart jumps, and she _freezes,_ because she’s never argued with him when he’s said her name like that. “What happened?”

She’s vibrating. Darcy fumbles the bandage, and has to start again. She turns away from both of them. “They’re letting Tom Allerdyne go.”

“ _What_?”

“They’re _letting him go_ ,” Darcy snaps. Her teeth scrape together, porcelain and stone. “I don’t—there was a technicality, a due process error, that’s what they’re saying. They’re—they’re claiming that he wasn’t read his rights or something, which is _wrong_ , but they’re letting him go. And there are—there are seventeen women who have to worry now, because he’s out of custody, and his family—Christ, his family’s probably going to sue them, and they’re _letting him go,_ Matt. They let that scummy bastard go, and I want to _hurt him._ ”

She doesn’t say it, she snarls it, and it’s—not quite Darcy who says it. It’s the viper, the wild thing, the animal that bares its teeth and snaps and bites, the woman in the bar who’d thrummed so hot and joyous when she’d slammed the guy into the floor that Matt hadn’t even recognized her. She’s Darcy and she’s not, all at once, like something’s been stripped away from her, like she’s been honed, and it’s transfixing, fire billowing out in a blanket, scorching everything it touches. She’s not a firework, not anymore. She’s a pipe bomb.

“Matt, I want to hurt him, I want—he shouldn’t be able to _do_ that—”

“Darcy,” says Elektra, very quietly.

“He’s _getting away with it_ and he _shouldn’t be_!” Darcy shouts, and the whole gym has turned to look at them. None of them can turn away. _Matt_ can’t turn away. “He’s did that to all those women and he shouldn’t be able to get away with it, I wish—I wish those guys who beat the shit out of him would come back and do it again, because he deserves it, he _deserves it_ , do you know what he’s _done_ —”

“ _Darcy_.”

“ _What_?” Darcy snaps, and then stops very suddenly. Elektra’s caught her hands.

“Spar with me,” she says.

“What? E—”

“Elektra,” Matt says, and it’s a warning, very soft, because he knows that look on Elektra’s face. He’s seen that look a thousand times by now. “Be careful.”

“You don’t need to be _careful_ with me, Matt—” Darcy says, or starts to say, but Elektra’s already pulled the gauze out of Darcy’s hands.

“Shut up,” she says. “Shut up and spar with me.”

Matt can’t speak. Darcy curls her fingers into hooks, holding on, digging her nails into Elektra’s skin hard enough to break it. There’s no blood, but it feels like there ought to be. She stares.

“Okay,” Darcy says, and Elektra nods.

“Good.”

The mats are empty. Elektra’s the one to wrap Darcy’s hands, fast, absent, like she’s practiced at it. Darcy wraps Elektra’s, and somehow that’s even smoother. They don’t speak as they do it, loose and comfortable even if Darcy’s crackling like a downed power line, and Elektra—she darts a few looks at him in the process, as if she’s daring him to contradict anything. He’s noticed, a little, how Darcy’s shifted in her movements, how she’s adjusted her center of gravity even when she’s sitting in class, or walking beside him, but it’s different to see it happen here. She knows this place. She’s comfortable here. The way she walks—it’s like a predator, back and forth and sideways, always looking around. His skin is whirring like a hive of hornets. _He deserves it, he deserves it, do you know what he’s done,_ and he can’t breathe. He _can’t,_ because it’s vicious, and it’s shadow, and it’s familiar, it’s reverberating in his chest like a tuning fork, _yes_ and _her_ and _them,_ and the look on Elektra’s face, _satisfied_ , like she’s finally seen what she’s been searching for, and _God_ —

_I wish they would come back and do it again._

The woman who smells of bergamot comes to stand next to him, her arms crossed. She’s wiry, her hair pulled up away from her face. A trace of whiskey hangs in the air around her, but it’s not from her. Rubbed off from someone else, he thinks. She turns to watch him for a minute, and then looks back at Darcy and Elektra.

“They’re really good,” she says, and Matt makes himself flinch. (He doesn’t have to make himself, that’s a lie, because he’d known the woman was going to speak to him, felt the buzz of her vocal cords, but he’s so distracted, so completely caught up in the play of motion on the mats, the way they glance against each other, and away again, practiced and familiar and honest, that he hadn’t even thought about it—) “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It happens,” Matt says, and his voice comes out rough. He doesn’t clear his throat. “Are they?”

“I mean, I’m not a martial arts expert, but like—they’re good.” She watches them for a little while, thinking. “Elektra’s better, and you can tell, but Darcy, she works really hard. She’s only been training for a few months, but she’s been here almost every day since they started, and just—she might not be as practiced but she’s almost as fast. It’s really impressive.”

(Elektra clips Darcy so hard that Darcy spins, nearly hits the mats, but she catches her balance and rolls at the last moment and lashes out with her foot, snapping around in a move that he remembers Elektra using on Tom Allerdyne, a spinning swipe that Elektra dances away from, teeth bared, her hair hanging in front of her face like a mane—)

“You’re Matt, right?” the woman says, and Matt turns his face up to her.

“Yeah.”

“They mention you sometimes.” She looks down at him, and doesn’t offer her hand. “I’m Trish.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to put a face to the name.”

(—and Elektra’s not messing around, she’s not holding back her blows and she’s not giving any quarter if Darcy leaves an opening for her, but she’s not beating her into the ground, either, even though she seems to be trying, because it’s been months since they started and Darcy’s picked up enough of E’s tricks to not fall for any of them, and _Christ_ , he knows Darcy’s a quick learner and he knows Elektra’s probably been pushing her faster than she should be but he had no idea that she could do this and every move sends a wave of smoke through his senses, _mine, mine_ —)

“It’s nice,” Trish says. “Seeing them. They’re friendly. Well, Darcy’s friendly, and she kind of makes Elektra friendly in turn. I used to be the only woman who showed up every day and now there are three of us. Makes things easier.”

Her voice is familiar, he thinks. He can’t remember from where. “They like coming here.”

“I can tell.” She fidgets with the hem of her tank top. “You think they’d teach me?”

Matt turns his face up to her again, startled. (—Darcy’s laughing when she pivots out of reach, her hair coming out of one of Elektra’s ties, and Elektra lets out a triumphant little bark when she catches Darcy’s fist in one hand and tries to flip her and Darcy twists away—) Trish is still watching Elektra and Darcy, her arms folded. “You want them to teach you?”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a teacher anyway.” She darts a look at him, just for a second. “Like—I don’t know. A friend of mine, um. She’s always watched out for me. I guess—I guess I’ve just started thinking it’s about time I managed on my own, that’s all.”

“With martial arts?”

She flushes up her neck. “I don’t know. It was an option.”

(—Elektra’s pinned Darcy to the mats, and Darcy spits hair out of her mouth and says, “ _Shit_ , E, quit _playing—_ ” in a voice that reminds him exactly why he’s avoided coming here since the very start, why he’s been very careful not to think about this, why  he’s been trying to keep this well out of his head, but now he can’t even scorch it out—)

“They’d probably be okay with it,” he says, after a moment. “You’d have to ask one of them.”

“I was planning on it.” Trish lets out a breath. “I don’t know. Like I said, I’m still thinking. But I think—I think I could be good at it.”

She’s all wire and muscle and fierceness, he thinks, so yes. Trish, whoever she is, she could probably be very good at it.

(—there’s a rumbling in E’s ribs that makes him think of a purr when she bends down and says “Who on earth says I’m playing?” a whisper right into Darcy’s ear, before she rolls off and waits for Darcy to get to her feet, bouncing, waiting, and it’s predator to predator, three of them here at once, and he’s always known Darcy gets sharp but has he really been so fucking stupid that he hadn’t seen what was right in front of his face —)

“I get that this is, y’know, a kind of awkward question—I don’t know you from adam, and they’re your friends, not mine, but like—” Trish gestures at Elektra and Darcy, at Darcy and Elektra. “What’s going on with them?”

(—Darcy yelps, gleefully, when a last swing catches Elektra hard enough in the jaw that she staggers, that Elektra goes down when Darcy snaps around and kicks her in the ribs, and Matt’s not sure if it was calculated or not, their hearts are beating too fast and he really wouldn’t put it past Elektra to lose on purpose, but when Darcy offers a hand to pull her back to her feet Elektra takes it and holds on for too long, lungs heaving as she says, “Better?” and Darcy’s only answer is a long, slow smile—)

“I don’t know,” Matt says, and Trish lets it alone.

_Liar._

.

.

.

She lies awake at night.

It doesn’t matter if it’s in Matt and Foggy’s room, or if she’s in her old room at Jen’s, or if she’s sleeping on Elektra’s couch, or if for once she gets to stay in her own dorm room, if Lindsay hasn’t hung a bra on the doorknob and basically said _get the fuck out, I need to get boned_. She lies awake, and stares at the ceiling, and she thinks for hours, her mind spinning around in circles, careening.

_I don’t want you to get hurt._

It hadn’t made sense to her at the time, but Christ, Luke’s. Luke’s has burned itself into her brain. The look on Matt’s face when he’d tugged her down by the hem of her sleeve, said, “You didn’t need to do that” with a little smile like she’s just moved a mountain. The way E had stood there, waiting, until Darcy had come back with her drink, and how she’d pushed her in between the pair of them, Elektra and Matt, as if she belonged there. As if they both wanted her there.

Third wheels, she thinks. Tricycles and three-legged barstools.

_Not this._

Mostly she uses Matt’s bed. Matt spends a lot of nights at E’s, for obvious reasons, and so when she starts moving her crap out of her and Lindsay’s room and into Foggy and Matt’s, there’s space for her to do it. She sets up her textbooks on the floor by the bed and she doesn’t change the sheets (that seems…kind of too personal. She washes them, though. They’re stupidly soft and they’re even more so when they’re freshly cleaned) but she does start dumping her shit everywhere. The RA on Foggy and Matt’s floor is out on campus somewhere like 90% of the time, and she’s so used to Darcy coming through anyway that she doesn’t actually notice that Darcy’s basically living in there, now. So when she lies awake, she’s doing it in Matt’s bed, staring up at the ceiling fan and watching the lights of the city play against the far wall, glimmering through the window.

_Not this._

One night she rolls onto her side. Foggy’s still awake, reading something, his hair pulled back with a tie—mostly, anyway—so when she shifts and tucks her hand under the pillow (it still smells like Matt, even after days, and she’s not sure if that’s her imagination) he turns and lifts his eyebrows at her. It’s weird, but in that instant she can see him as a law professor, reading glasses perched on his nose, brows cocked and lips parted in a silent _what is it?_ Students would trust him, she thinks. He’d be a good teacher. She wonders if he’s ever considered that.

“What’s up, cup?” he says, and the image fades. She still stows it away in the back of her head.

“Nothing. Just—” She swallows. “What did you mean?”

Foggy looks at his book. Then he shuts it, and rolls over to face her, putting it on the floor. “What did I mean when?”

_Just be careful._

“You said you didn’t want me to get hurt.” She pushes her glasses down her nose, just enough that they’re not jamming into the bridge anymore. Her iPod’s pillowed in one hand, hidden away. “What did you think was gonna hurt me?” 

Foggy sighs. He sighs, and he rubs at his eyes, looking at the clock, then at the ceiling. “You want to go into this right now?”

“Is there gonna be another chance to go into it?”

“Probably, but like—I do have an eight am class.”

Her throat hurts. “You think it’ll take that long?”

He opens one eye, and peers at her. Then Foggy sits up, folding his legs into a lotus, and grabs his pillow, pressing it hard into his stomach. Darcy doesn’t move. “Just—okay. I didn’t think we were ever actually going to talk about this, but okay.”

“Talk about what?”

“You,” says Foggy. “And Matt. And you and Matt and Elektra, too. But mostly you and Matt.”

She lets that roll over her, in a wave, in a stream. Then she shifts, sits up and mirrors him, pushing the pillow into her guts, further and further until she thinks she might cram it into her spine. “Me and Matt,” she says, and her throat’s dry. “What about me and Matt?”

“Shit.” Foggy yanks the tie out of his hair, and rakes it out of his face. “You understand that—that all of this is stuff that’s my perspective, right? Like…don’t bite my head off. I could be wrong. I don’t think I am, like—really, really don’t think I am, but I could be. So no biting.”

“Foggy, what the hell are you talking about?”

“That you’re in love with Matt,” he says.

Darcy actually, legitimately, cannot speak. She opens her mouth, and shuts it again. Her hands are entirely numb. When she looks down at her knuckles, the bruises look like shadow stains. Foggy’s watching her when she lifts her head, cringing, like he thinks she’s going to explode.

“What,” says Darcy, “the _fuck_.”

“I said no biting!”

“I’m not biting you, just—Foggy, what the _hell_ , where did that even _come from—_ ”

“No.” Foggy shakes his head, setting his jaw. “No, you—you don’t get to pull that shit with me. I’ve watched you for _years,_ Lewis. I know how you work—”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Christ, Darcy. Do you even _think_ about it? The pair of you, you don’t—you don’t act like you’re friends, not really.”

“ _We don’t act like friends?_ ” Darcy says, and it’s so high-pitched that Foggy flinches. “How do we _not_ act like friends?”

“You _don’t_.” Foggy shakes his head again. “Watching you, it’s like—shit, Darcy. _Shit._ Just—are you seriously telling me you’ve never once thought that—that you ever cared about Matt as anything _other_ than a friend? Because you and me, we’re friends. We are pals and chums and all kinds of synonyms. How you act with Matt—you don’t act that way with me.”

“Because you’re different fucking people, Foggy, Jesus Christ, how I _act with Matt,_ what is that even supposed to mean—”

“You’re gentle with Matt.” He blows air out his nose. “You’re—you’re not just gentle, you’re _soft._ You do this whole—it’s like watching a rock turn into a sponge and it’s so fucking weird, but you’re softer.”

“We’re _friends_!”

“You touch him all the time!”

“I touch _you_ all the time!”

“Not in the same way!”

“There’s no special way!”

“Name one other—” He stops, and rests his forefinger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. “It’s like talking to a brick wall. I knew it would be. I _knew_ you wouldn’t want to think about this, that’s why I didn’t want to talk about it—”

“Well, too fucking late, sunshine, because you brought it up and now you have to explain _what the fuck you mean—_ ”

“You _orbit_ him,” Foggy snaps, and Darcy shuts up. “Darcy, you—you’re soft, with him. You’re soft, you protect him—you’re like a fucking wolverine when it comes to people giving him shit, it’s terrifying, Jesus Christ—and you _orbit_ him, like—the pair of you orbit each other, like you’re caught in a loop, and just—you don’t ever to get to tell anyone I noticed this, okay? Like, not _ever_ , not anyone ever, but you don’t—I don’t think you even realize you do it, but you _watch_ him. You watch him, you go—you go so far to make sure that he’s okay, and you’d do that for me, I know, but it’s not—it’s not the same, Darcy, it isn’t, because the way you sound when you talk about him, it’s as if—you talk about him and you get this smile that I never, ever see on you, not anywhere else, not _for_ anyone else, and you have no idea. You’ve never had any idea. You’ve buried it so deep that you’re wading in the mud, and—and I thought at first that you were trying to be friends with Elektra because you were overcompensating, or something, and it was pretty obvious from the fourth week that Matt and Elektra have a thing going that isn’t gonna end until it implodes, but like—I legitimately can’t tell who you’re in love with, anymore, half the time—”

“I’m not _in love_ with either of them, Christ—”

“Just—shut up, okay? You asked—”

“I think I would be able to tell if I was in love, Foggy—”

“No, you wouldn’t!” Foggy snaps, and Darcy can’t speak again. “No, you wouldn’t, Darce. You’re—you’re so, so good with other people’s feelings, I don’t even know how you figure us out half the time, but you _know_ things about people and that’s—that’s amazing, it really is. But you’re so preoccupied trying to work out how other people are and what other people need that you completely ignore everything about yourself. And—and with this, it’s more than that, it’s like you’re purposefully looking away from it. Like you’re trying not to see it because you think it’ll mess something up.”

Her throat hurts. Why the fuck is her vision blurring? “Foggy—”

“And I know—I know it makes you uncomfortable, and I know it makes you scared, but shit, Darce, I think you’ve been in love with him since we were freshmen, and that—you don’t talk about them like you do other people. You’ve never talked about Matt like you do about other people. And now you’re—you’re not the same with Elektra, not exactly, but Jesus, Darcy, you talk about her and it’s like—it’s like you’re in awe. Like you can’t even breathe. The more time you spend with her the more it happens, and when you see her, God. You look like you’re watching a sun come up. And that’s why it scares the shit out of me, you getting pulled in between them, because sometimes I think you’re never gonna want to leave, and I don’t—I don’t know if you’re going to get your heart broken or not. _That’s_ why I want you to be careful.”

She _can’t_ breathe. Not right now. It feels as though Foggy’s slipped a fishhook down her throat and he’s dragging her guts out inch by inch. She swallows, trying to work her throat. “How do I talk about them?”

Foggy watches her. Then he says, “Like they’re yours.”

She heaves. Darcy presses her hands to her face, swallowing, over and over. _No,_ she thinks, _no, that’s wrong, that has to be wrong, I don’t do that, I don’t,_ but if that’s true then why is her heart beating so damn fast, and why has she been lying awake, and why has she been so fucking transfixed by a smile, for months, for years—

(Elektra’s blade smile when she’d caught Darcy’s eye in Luke’s, the curve to Matt’s mouth when he’d pulled her down, and that’s wrong, that’s _wrong,_ but is it really—)

“I don’t know if you believe me,” he says, and she snaps back into the moment. “I don’t know if you’ll hear me. But you asked what I see. And—and that’s what I see.”

Something hot runs down her cheek. When it lands on her hand, she realizes it’s a tear. Darcy gulps, and wipes her face, ignoring the prickle of damp on her skin. She can’t say anything, for a while.

“Does Matt know? That you think—” She can’t voice it. She has to swallow a few times. “Have you asked _him_ about—”

“Hell no. You think I’ve brought this up with _Matt_? Even if Elektra had never become a thing, even if I’d worked up the guts, he has—pardon the expression. He has this huge-ass blind spot when it comes to you. I’m pretty sure you could actually shoot someone in front of him and he’d still insist that it wasn’t you. I don’t know where the fuck it comes from, but—but I really wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.”

She chokes on something that might be a laugh, and looks down at the pillow. She can feel Foggy watching her. Her skin’s prickling, ants crawling along her bones.

“I’m not,” she says. “In love with him.”

“Sure, kid.”

“And—and I don’t feel anything like that for Elektra.”

“If you say so,” says Foggy dubiously.

“I _don’t._ ”

“Keep that in mind because when you finally figure it out, no matter how long it takes, I’m definitely gonna be there to say _I told you so_.”

She scowls at him. Foggy tosses his pillow to the head of the bed again, and unfolds his legs, curling his toes over the edge of the bed.

“You look like you’re a cat caught in a rainstorm,” he says, which is his way of saying _come hug me if you need to_ without actually saying it. Darcy snorts. Still, she draws the comforter around her shoulders and clambers off Matt’s bed, dropping down onto Foggy’s. When he hooks an arm around her, she heaves a sigh, and shuts her eyes.

“I’m not asking you to believe me,” he says. “I’m just—will you think about it?”

Darcy peers through half-lidded eyes at her toenails. Her polish is chipping. Foggy’s feet aren’t all that much bigger than hers—she steals his boots, sometimes, when she has big enough socks—but he has hairy toes, which is still one of the funniest things she’s ever seen. She knocks her knee into his, and when he bumps her back, she shuts her eyes.

“No promises,” she says, but Foggy hums like he’s won the argument, and doesn’t say anything more.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: blood, knife cuts, emergency first aid, descriptions of blood, canon-typical violence, Catholic Guilt (TM), many feels, and some really bad negotiations.
> 
> I really don't recommend doing what E does here, in regards to the little violent tricycle that could, but E is E and she makes her own decisions. (A fact that Frank Miller seems incapable of understanding.)

She winds up telling Darcy on a Wednesday.

Elektra’s pissed. She’d been sloppy last night, and a mugger had managed to catch her in the side with a knife deep enough that it hurts to stand. Matthew’s face is all bruising, and she has a fairly large mark over her cheek and jaw from a backhanded blow, which means they have to come up with a story. “Motorcycle nearly ran us down,” he says, when Darcy darts around the counter at Starbucks and touches her fingers to the edges of the bruising over his eye, down his jaw, tracing out the contours of them before shifting to Elektra and inspecting her, too, drawing sparking lines across Elektra’s cheekbones. “It’s okay, I’ll heal—Darcy, we’re fine. Seriously.”

“Fucking motorcyclists,” Darcy says, voice trembling. She turns back to Matthew and puts her palm to his cheek before hooking her arms around Elektra’s neck. Elektra jumps, because she can’t help it, but when Darcy doesn’t let go, she presses her fingers to the small of Darcy’s back, and rests her nose to the curve of her throat. Darcy doesn’t protest. “Be _careful_.”

 _Ask me,_ she thinks, looking at Matthew’s face when Darcy finally lets her go. _Ask me. I know you want to. It’s the only way I’m going to get you to admit it, and I’ll go as far as I have to, so ask me, damn you. Ask me what I think I’m doing._

He doesn’t say anything.

On top of the bruising and the gash in her side, pounding like an anvil, she realizes that she’d grabbed the wrong bag this morning (she can only blame blood loss) which means she doesn’t have her Spanish textbook. She ends up sharing with some girl she’s never spoken to before, who smells like weed and patchouli. (She would share with Matthew, but Matthew doesn’t use a textbook. He memorizes it all. Which is _infuriating._ ) Someone knocks into her elbow on her way out the door and spills the last of her coffee. Nikolas calls to ask about a fundraiser at The Plaza in three weeks, and she has no reason not to say yes, so that’s something she has to think about. A bike messenger nearly runs her down on the 116th. Her group project in Queer Readings of 19th Century Literature is being scuppered through the sheer ineptitude of her groupmates, and to top it all off, she sees the boy whose thumb she broke coming out of a faculty office down the hallway. He blanches and runs when he sees her, but it’s not enough to improve her mood.

So she’s seething when she gets to the gym, and she’s still seething half an hour later when Darcy comes in and drops her bag by the bench, watching her with eyebrows that are climbing steadily up into her hair. “The bag did you wrong, then?” she says, when Elektra snaps into a spinning kick that nearly knocks the whole thing out of the roof. “I thought it looked sketchy.”

“Today,” says Elektra, “is _awful._ ”

“Sometimes that’s how life works.” Darcy puts her hands to the bag, steadying it out. Elektra hits the thing, over and over, but it doesn’t have the give she wants, doesn’t have the feel of humanity. It’s too obviously fake, and it’s doing nothing to help her mood. She wants to _hurt_ someone, but she holds her tongue, because the only person in here she can hurt is Darcy, and everything in her spits at the thought. Darcy’s eyes flick to her face again, to the cut over Elektra’s eyebrow. “You wanna talk about it?”

“I want to hurt something.”

“You’ve already totaled the bag.” Darcy doesn’t shift her hands off the vinyl. “Punching things not working for once?”

“Darcy,” Elektra snaps, biting, and Darcy just lifts an eyebrow. _You’ve never, ever been scared,_ she thinks. Something about that is soothing. She hits the bag one last time, and then unfolds her hand, presses her palm to the weight of it. “It’s too confining in here.”

“Bars?”

“Tried,” she says, and rolls her shoulder. “Won’t help.”

“That must be why Josh looks like he’s about to crap himself,” says Darcy, and she hooks her arm through Elektra’s. Josh is the secretary at the front. “You do some crazy shit on the bars.”

“I don’t fall.”

“Hm.” She mulls, for a second. “Hey. You wanna teach me some parkour?”

Elektra turns to look at her. It’s calculated, obviously. The corners of Darcy’s mouth have turned up into something curving and sly and amused, something that Elektra wants to put her lips to, try and catch the taste of it. _I can’t do this for much longer._ She can’t lose them, not either of them, but this suspension—she can’t handle it. She’s not used to it. She’s never kept her mouth shut about something like this before, and it’s sandpaper in her throat. Elektra swallows once. “You know it’s still cold outside.”

“We’ll be running around, right? Besides, you’ll get to show off.” Darcy cocks her head. “C’mon, E. Unleash the sassassin.”

“That’s not a word,” Elektra says, but there’s a kind of tension leaking out of her spine at the ridiculousness of it. “Sassy assassin. Or sass-assassin. But not sassassin.”

“I’m making it a word.” She grabs her bag and slings it over her other shoulder without pulling her arm out of Elektra’s. “Come on, sassassin. Let’s go.”

It’s freezing, outside, but for once there’s not as much ice as there could be. Darcy buttons up her peacoat over her hoodie and keeps her hat pulled low down over her ears as Elektra debates, and then cuts them sideways towards one of the playgrounds in Central Park. There are a few that are still being used, but finally they find one that’s mostly empty, with enough iron railings and benches to make it interesting to someone just starting. When she kicks her bag underneath a bench and shucks her jacket, Darcy lifts her eyebrows. “Here?”

“You’re not jumping off of buildings yet.” She ties her hair up. “Besides, you have to graduate from a bench first.”

“The _bench_?”

“How many ways can you jump over a bench without climbing it?” says Elektra, and demonstrates. Simplest, she thinks, to go from the back, rest your hand on the top and propel yourself over like you’re leaping over a gymnastics horse. Darcy watches her do it, once, twice, and then makes a face.

“You’re like…if I fall I’ll snap a rib.”

“Or your pelvis,” says Elektra. “But then again, I could have broken your neck a long time ago.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” says Darcy, and rubs her palms together. The first time she tries, she slips, and slides backwards down onto the seat with one leg still caught on the other side of the bench. It takes her twice more before she finally manages to bounce over the bench, stumbling a little on the landing but at least not cracking her ankle into pieces. She looks so pleased that Elektra wants to bite her nose. “Where did you start learning to do this?”

“Greece.” She twirls her finger, and Darcy circles around to the back of the bench again, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Whenever she breathes, it’s like she’s blowing smoke. “After my father pulled me out of school, I had a great deal of free time and tutors I could bully into doing whatever I wanted.”

“So you made them teach you parkour?”

“They taught me gymnastics. I applied it in my own way.”

Darcy leaps the bench again, and again. She’s forgotten to take off the hat. It’s ridiculous, watching it. “Why the hell are you in English Lit?” she says, as she pops up from a roll over the sidewalk and jumps the bench from the other way, one foot on the seat and pushing off like it’s a staircase. “You could be like…a superspy. James Bond, but prettier. And less sexist.”

“My father and brother are the patriots. I picked something different.” Elektra takes a breath. The next time she tops the bench, she flips, curls in tight and circles sideways, landing in a roll that takes her a good yard past where she’d landed before. She’d meant to stick the landing, but there’s an odd floatiness to her limbs that makes her not trust her own feet. Darcy’s eyebrows have clambered back into her hair when Elektra straightens, and her mouth is twitching.

“I’m not doing that.”

“You could if you tried.”

“I’m _not_ gonna do your crazy death jumps. I’ll stick to my vaulting, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

Darcy gives her a filthy look, but she goes back to her practicing. Elektra pulls her coat back on after a few minutes—it’s too cold here for her thin blood, and the fact that she hasn’t managed to get used to it yet is as infuriating as Matthew’s ability to memorize Spanish grammar forms—and watches her. She can’t move like Elektra, not exactly, she doesn’t have the gymnastics training for that, but a part of her thinks that Darcy moves like Matthew. A proto-Matthew, when he’d first started really learning, cobbling things together and working at them until they looked smooth as ice. At the same time, though, she’s fundamentally different from Matthew. She has a different center of gravity, a different way of holding her weight. If Elektra herself is a snake, fast strikes and serpentine angles, and Matthew is a shadow, then she thinks Darcy might be a kind of cat. Claws and spitting fur.

She’s so lost in the idea that she almost doesn’t notice Darcy’s shouting until she grabs Elektra by the arm, and bats away the automatic throw. “E, didn’t you hear me? You have—you have blood, like, all over your shirt, Jesus Christ, that’s _yours_ —”

Elektra curses. She’d covered the gash with a bandage, and she’d thought she’d sealed it, but when she shoves her coat aside and rolls up the (yes, wet) tank top and T-shirt, the gauze is soaked through. _Oh,_ she thinks, and wonders if she ought to sit down. _So that’s why I’m dizzy._

“Jesus Christ,” Darcy says again, and looks up at Elektra. “Is this—did this happen with the motorcycle? This morning? _Christ_ , E, why didn’t you go to the hospital?”

“Don’t touch it,” Elektra says, and Darcy holds up both hands. Her fingertips are slick and red.

“I wasn’t going to touch it.”

“Just—in my bag.” Shit. Is she really going to do this here? (She is, because she can’t exactly do it anywhere else, and she can’t exactly trust Darcy not to run off if she leaves, and she can’t go to the hospital and if she calls Matthew he’ll panic and that’s—none of those are good options.) “There’s a case of first aid things, just—grab that, please.”

Darcy doesn’t say anything. She just obeys. There’s hurt and confusion and anger radiating off her, boiling the air. Elektra takes the case with bloody hands. Her heart’s thudding in her chest.

“We need a sink,” she says, and still horrifyingly silent, Darcy stands and leads the way to a public restroom.

There’s no lock on the inside of the door, but it’s too cold for most people to be out right now. Elektra dumps her coat onto the counter, and pulls off her shirt, her tank, leaves them on the counter and ignores Darcy’s shocked little noise at all the bruises on her skin, the cuts and the scrapes. Red smears against the plastic. The thing doesn’t need stitching, which is a small mercy. Still, when she wads up the old gauze and bundles it into a plastic bag, she’s cursing herself. She should have noticed that the scab had cracked. She should have realized the thing was bleeding again. She should have _noticed._

“Give me something to do,” Darcy says, her voice high. “I need—give me something to do.”

Elektra looks at her for a moment. Then she says, “Hand me the disinfectant.”

It’s not a very long process. Pressure stops the bleeding after a few minutes, or at least slows it enough that she feels comfortable not worrying much. She redoes the bandage, thick gauze layered with thinner gauze and held down with an ace bandage, wrapped around and around and around. The shirts are done for, and she shoves them into the plastic bag, too. It’s only once she’s cleaned the blood off her skin as best she can, and wadded up everything and shoved it to the bottom of the bathroom garbage can, that she looks up at Darcy again. Her face is very cold, set in lines of dark.

“Elektra,” she says. “Please tell me no one did that to you.”

She doesn’t think Darcy’s asking about Matthew. Elektra looks down at her hands again, and washes them twice, until the water runs clear and there’s no blood left under her fingernails. “I was sloppy,” she says. “Usually I’m better at dodging.”

Darcy digests that. Then she turns, and walks out of the bathroom. There’s no sound in the world for a moment, nothing but the beat of her heart and the rasp of air in her lungs and _no, no, not you, please not you, please don’t leave, not you, please_. Then she breathes, and goes after her.

She hasn’t vanished. Darcy’s standing by the bench they’d been practicing on, hands shoved deep into her pockets. She hadn’t washed them, Elektra thinks. She’s smearing Elektra’s blood into her pockets, and she might not even realize it. Elektra stops a few feet away, her side pounding, waiting. Darcy heaves a breath, two. Then she turns.

“You’re one of them,” she says. “Aren’t you?”

There’s still no fear. There’s never been fear in her. Elektra curls her fingers into the strap of her bag. “Yes.”

“You’re the one who—with Allerdyne—”

“Yes.”

“And you go out and—”

“Yes.”

“And you—”

“Probably yes.”

Darcy pushes her thumbs into her eyes for a moment. Then she lifts her head, and swallows. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

“What?”

“Just—just sit there. Don’t do the E thing and run off when I’m not looking, or I’ll track you down and hurt you. But I just—I’ll be right back.”

Elektra sits. Darcy takes a deep breath, and marches off. She marches everywhere, typically, but this is actual marching, fast enough that the ends of her scarf bounce against her back as she turns the corner and vanishes out of sight. An icy cobweb weaves around her throat, paralyzing her. Elektra closes her eyes, and takes a single, deep breath, holds it for as long as she can. When she lets it free, the tension eases a little. She wants to take to the rooftops and fly, run away from all of this. She’s already given Matthew the key to destroying her; does she really need to add another person to the list?

She thinks of Darcy’s face, when she’d hung up on Elektra’s father. She thinks of the bar, and the alleyway. Her answer’s simple enough. She links her fingers together on her lap, and waits.

Darcy comes back around the opposite corner about ten minutes later, her cheeks pink from the cold and the exertion and a fresh cup from a coffee cart in her hands. She drops back down onto the bench, turning towards Elektra, knocking their knees together. She doesn’t seem to notice. “Okay.” She swallows. “Okay. So explain something to me. When you said you did parkour and shit, was it for this sort of thing? For like—beating up bad guys?”

“I also just like doing it,” Elektra says. “It’s challenging.”

“ _It’s challenging,_ she says _._ ” She breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth. “Beating up bad guys or parkour?”

All of it. Both. “Both,” she says aloud, and Darcy takes another deep breath. The tips of her ears are peeking red through her hair. Elektra keeps her hands in her pockets rather than yank on the edge of her hat to cover them, because she shouldn’t be cold. There’s a mass of something absurdly soft and protective melding into her stomach wall. It’s quite possibly some kind of terminal cancer, or a result of blood loss, and thus doesn’t deserve acknowledgment. “I enjoy doing both.” 

Darcy’s lips part. She bites down on her thumbnail, thinking. She’s buzzing, and the energy coming off her is making Elektra’s muscles twitch. “I’m assuming when you say _enjoy_ there’s like—is this some kind of vengeance thing, or—”

“I enjoy what I’m good at, and I’m good at hurting people,” Elektra says. “I told you that before.”

“Yeah, but I thought you were talking about the way you use words like fucking sledgehammers, not like—beating someone up in a back alley.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Okay, just—why?”

“Because I can,” Elektra says, in a low voice. “Because I want to. Because I like it. Because it’s the most powerful feeling in the world. Because maybe if I do it I can stop one thing from getting fucked up. All of it. Or something else, I don’t know. I don’t think about it too much.”  

Darcy breathes in the steam from her cup. She’s not shaking. For a long time, she just sits, quietly, considering. “Does Matt know?”

“You should ask him that.”

She considers that too. Darcy sips her coffee, and then looks up at Elektra again, unblinking. Her scarf has fallen away from her neck, knotting up against her leg. “Why are you telling me this?”

She’s supposed to ask more questions about _what_ , not about _why_. She’s supposed to do a lot of things. Elektra makes a mental note to stop expecting anything out of Darcy Lewis, because she has to scrap it all in three minutes anyway. She knots her fingers together. “Because I wanted to.”

Darcy lets out a gusting breath like she’s just been kicked in the guts. She closes her eyes. “You’ve just made me into an accessory, you realize that.”

“So I’ve been reliably informed.”

“By who?”

“Google.”

“E, seriously—”

“I’ll go,” Elektra says, the ache starting up, slow and cruel and winding into the back of her neck. Her head starts to hurt. “You can just—do whatever you want with it. I’ll go.”

She’s halfway up off the bench when Darcy seizes her by the wrist and yanks her back down hard enough to nearly spill her coffee. “Don’t you fucking do that,” she snaps, and there’s the fierce fury from the gym again, hot enough to burn. “You don’t get to tell me shit like that and then walk away, E.”

“I don’t know what you want me to _do_.”

“I’m not going to report you or anything, Jesus Christ. Is that what you think of me?”

 _No. No, not ever._ “I wouldn’t have admitted it if I thought you would have.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

Elektra presses her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth, and counts to three. “Because I thought that you would get it,” she says, and Darcy _shivers,_ scalp to toes, at the way her voice comes out, threaded with the dark. “Because—because I thought you’d understand. And I didn’t want to lie about it. Not to you.”

Darcy doesn’t let go of Elektra’s wrist. Her nails are painted green, the forefinger silver. Elektra focuses on the polish rather than the way Darcy’s pressing her fingers hard into the pulse in her wrist, the way she’s struggling to say a word. Finally, she swallows. “Not to me.”

“No.”

She’s quiet again. She still hasn’t let go of Elektra’s wrist. Finally, her hand slides away. Darcy stands, digging her nails into Elektra’s shoulder. When she bends down, Elektra tenses, because she can’t help it, she doesn’t like people in her space unless she invites them there, but of course Darcy doesn’t hurt her. She presses her mouth to Elektra’s temple, just beside the line of her hair. Her lips are warm from coffee and from speech, and the hair on Elektra’s arms stands up underneath the fabric of her coat. Darcy pulls back, just a little. She doesn’t take her hand off Elektra’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” she says, after a moment. Her voice is all shadow, her accent creeping free. She clears her throat. “For not lying.”

Elektra closes her eyes, just listening for a moment. She catches the hem of Darcy’s coat in one hand, and then hooks her fingers into Darcy’s pocket. Darcy stands there, and Elektra sits and holds on, and neither of them move.

“Thank you,” Elektra says, and she means _for being here_ and _for not running_ and _for not cutting my throat, because I handed you the knife and turned to let you do it, but I’m starting to think you’d die before you ever put a blade to me._ Darcy’s fingers tighten on her shoulder. “Thank you.”

Darcy swallows. She strokes her thumb over the fabric of Elektra’s coat, unknowingly, Elektra thinks. She still does it in a cycle of three. “I’m cold,” Darcy says after a moment, and when Elektra gets up, she loops her arm through Elektra’s and leans close. Her whole left side prickles. “We should go food.”

“Grammar.”

“Bite me.”

It’s not an invitation. She’s tempted, though. Elektra presses Darcy’s arm hard into her ribs, and lets herself be towed along.

.

.

.

_I thought you’d understand._

Darcy goes running. She hates running, _hates_ it, hates how uncomfortable it is and how it makes her feel, but her limbs are jumping, and if she has to sit still she’ll kill someone. ( _I thought you’d understand,_ E says, and her voice, Christ, her voice is everything, it’s velvet and a blade, it’s smoke and the crack of a gun, it’s husky and it echoes and it’s stuck in the back of her mind on repeat, _I thought you would understand—_ ) She goes running, she sprints until she can’t breathe anymore, and then she stops blocks and blocks away from anything familiar, hands on her knees, gagging.

_I didn’t want to lie about it. Not to you._

Elektra is a vigilante. She turns it over, finds the edges, places where it might cut. Elektra was stabbed probably beating the shit out of some nameless mook she’s never going to hear a thing about, because most guys who get the shit beat out of them by a woman don’t like to report it. ( _You ever come anywhere near him again, I swear to God, I’ll do a hell of a lot worse than just putting you on your ass._ ) She’s a vigilante and that’s why her knuckles are so much more bruised than Darcy’s have ever been, that’s why she’s been black and blue, that’s why she knows all these ways to hurt people, it’s because she _uses_ them.

_I enjoy what I’m good at, and I’m good at hurting people._

And that should scare her, she thinks. That should scare the hell out of her. ( _Hatred and cruelty have their place._ ) Elektra is her own Bertha Mason, and Bertha Mason tries to kill. But she’s—and she has to think, she has to start running again when she considers this, because her muscles are burning and screaming but she can’t not move—she’s _not frightened_. She should be frightened but she’s not, and the reason for that—

_I understand her. And it’s not necessarily a good thing._

She thinks of how it felt, to cut that guy to pieces, to hit him and hurt him and slam him to the ground so fast that she’d almost felt something crack, and the flush of it all through her, electric and vicious and _howling._ She can still feel the echo of it if she clenches her hands. She thinks of Shitty Michael, the way he’d looked at her, and the way _Zeke_ had looked at her, and Christ, she wishes she could have had a crack at Tom Allerdyne.

No. She’s not frightened. She’s never been frightened, not of Elektra. Not of E.

(Elektra has a partner, she thinks. Elektra has a partner, a man she fights alongside. Elektra has someone she fights with rather than against, and she can’t think about that right now, she can’t, she _can’t_ —)

 _What are you, Darcy Lewis?_ she thinks, and she runs until she can’t breathe anymore.

.

.

.

Elektra waits until Matthew is fully in her apartment, until he’s shut the door and put the cane aside, before she says, “You need to tell Darcy.”

He stills. Carefully, he says, “Tell Darcy what?”

“You need to tell Darcy what we do.”

The tension fades, then, she thinks. But only a little. “No.”

“You need to tell her.”

“I don’t.”

She thinks of blood in a bathroom sink and big eyes and fingertips streaked red as she says, “Matthew, you _do._ ”

“What makes you think she’d want to hear it?” he says, and there’s an edge to his voice that’s almost rough. Not quite. But almost. “She wouldn’t, Elektra.”

“She thinks we did the right thing with Tom Allerdyne.”

“She’s—” He takes a breath, pulls off his glasses, rubs at his nose like it’s going to do anything to sooth him. “What the hell have you been doing, E?”

“What you should have been doing,” she says. “What you should have been doing three years ago. I’m treating her like she’s an adult.”

“Are you saying I’m treating her like a child?”

“Well, you’re sure as hell not acting like she can manage the truth about you, so I don’t know what else to call it.”

“Elektra,” Matthew says, and there it is, there’s the anger she’s been trying to drag out of him, the confusion and the frustration and the fury. She knows how to deal with the dark. “Where the hell is this coming from?”

“You tell me.”

“I thought you liked Darcy.”

( _Blood and a trembling all through her skin when Elektra touches her lips to Darcy’s ear, smiling—_ )

“You need to tell her,” Elektra says. “If you don’t tell her, she’s going to find out somehow.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I _can_ know that.”

“You _can’t_ ,” he snaps, and then he reins himself back in. Matthew puts his hands to his face, for a moment. Then he lifts his head again. “Elektra, we’ve talked about this, they wouldn’t—she wouldn’t ever be able to accept this, what we do, she wouldn’t—”

“She did with me.”

Matthew stops. He swallows. He’s suspended in space, in the moment, and she’s waiting. Maybe it’s for him to fall. Finally, he licks his lips. “What?”

“I said,” Elektra says, enunciating every letter of it, every scrap, “that she did with me.”

He lifts his hand. Then it drops again. She can’t make heads or tails of the expression on his face—it’s flickering between so many different emotions that she can’t differentiate them at all. When he tries to speak, all that comes out is a cracking sound. Elektra folds her arms over her stomach.

“You told her,” he says, finally.

“Not about you.”

“But about—”

“Yes.”

He puts his face in his hands for a moment, just for a moment, and in that moment she can see the boy from St. Agnes, silent and overpowered and alone. Then he lifts his head, and the image is gone. “Jesus, Elektra. _Jesus,_ why would you—”

“Because I had to.”

“You didn’t have to—”

“I _did_.”

He’s winding tight across the shoulders, clenching and unclenching his fists. Panic’s written into every scrap of him. “ _Why_?”

“You know why,” Elektra says, her voice trembling, and his hands loosen. “Matthew, you know why.”

He knows. She can see it in his face. He knows exactly why. _I need her._ It tangles up in her throat, never reaches her mouth. _I need her and you need her and if I hadn’t said anything, if I hadn’t told her, she would have found out anyway, someday, and then she’d really be gone, not because she’s not like us, but because she’d hate that we lied. And I need her, and I need you, and I hate you both for making me need you, and I just—we need her._ Matthew puts a fist to his lips, as if he’s trying not to throw up. Elektra’s hands are shaking.   

“What did—” He stops. “Did she—”

“She asked me if you knew. I told her to ask you.”

He waves that off. “What else did she say?”

“She wanted me to explain myself.”

“And did you?”

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“There’s not much to explain.”

He digs his fingers into his hair, like he wants to tear it free. “God. Jesus Christ. _Jesus._ What did she say?”

“Before or after she walked the length of the park?” Elektra says. When his eyebrows lift, she shakes her head. “Never mind. Just—she asked questions. She asked why. Not—not why I started. Why I do it.”

“And what did you say?”

“Because I have to,” says Elektra. “Because I want to. Because I like it.”

Matthew sinks down into the nearest chair. He puts his head in his hands, and breathes. Elektra doesn’t come any closer to him. The whole world feels like spun glass. She swallows.

“Matthew, listen to me.” He twitches a shoulder, doesn’t lift his face to her. She doesn’t care. “I told her all of it and all she said was that she understood. She said thank you. She—”

(— _a hand on her shoulder, and hair in her face, a mouth against her skin just beside her hairline, her temple, and Darcy looking at the ground afterwards, unable to meet her eyes_ —)

Matthew’s listening hard. Elektra breathes, in and out, a cycle of three. She steadies her hands. “You need to hear me,” she says. “I told her everything I could, and she didn’t run away. She _stayed_. For me. She stayed.”

“Elektra.” His voice cracks. “E—”

“You’re in love with her,” she says, and he flinches like she’s just punched him, curls away from her.

“Elektra, no—”

“ _Listen to me_ ,” she snarls, and Matthew actually shuts up. “You’re in love with her, and I’m—” The words stick, but Matthew’s lips part and his eyes go wide and she doesn’t know what he’s hearing, in her voice, in her heart, but she’s hoping he can at least believe her. “I’m not giving you up because of her, and I’m not giving up her up because of you, but if you keep doing this, if you keep—keep treating her like she’s fragile and pretending nothing’s happening then you’re going to make it break. It’s fracturing already, and I’m not about to lose what’s mine because you’re scared you’re going to chase her away when you’re not.”

“E, please—”

“You’re wrong about her.” She takes a huge breath. “You’re _wrong._ You want to know what I’ve been trying to understand? I’ve been—I’ve been trying to understand her, and Matthew, you’re not looking at her. I think—I think you’d be able to see it if it were anyone _but_ her, but—but you’ve built up this idea in your head that you haven’t been able to shake, that she would never ever be able to understand you, or me. But I’m telling you that I looked her in the eye and I told her exactly what it is I am, and she didn’t once look away from me. And that was—that was _me,_ Matthew. She knows you better than—than anyone else, at least the parts you’ve shown her, and if she could accept me, then—then what do you think she’s going to do with you?”

“Will you just—”

“It’s up to you, what you do about that, but if we lose her—” Her voice shakes. Her hands don’t. “Matthew, if we lose her because you’re too scared to tell her the truth, then I swear to God, I will never, ever forgive you.”

Matthew doesn’t say anything. She’s fairly certain he can’t. Elektra lays her hand to the back of his neck, the soft bare spot he’s left open for her, a place where she could so easily kill him, and she strokes her thumb across his skin. She puts her mouth to the top of his head, lingering. And then she goes, because there are some things that have to be decided alone.

.

.

.

He wanders.

Matt doesn’t use the rooftops, for once. He takes his cane, and he uses the streets, tapping back and forth until anyone else would think he’s lost. He crisscrosses the city, cuts through alleys and listens to cats, tries very hard to think. It starts to snow about an hour into it, and his hands get numb.

_You’re in love with her, and I’m—_

(Elektra turning, putting her mouth to Darcy’s ear, and _who says I’m playing_ and _spar with me_ and _Matthew, if we lose her_ —)

He calls Darcy, once. He hangs up before the tone beeps twice, because _Christ,_ what does it say that his first instinct is to find her, or Elektra, or both of them, together, tugging him down between them—

( _You know why, Matthew._ )

Of course he knows why. He’s always known why. A flush under her skin and a burning in her chest, fast heartbeats and careful touches and Elektra all over Darcy, Darcy tangled up with the pair of them until he’s started mixing the scents and the sounds, until they started mimicking each other, until they’re dancing on a blade and Elektra keeps pushing from side to side, trying to tip it, trying to start something, whatever it is—

( _You’re wrong about her._ )

Darcy calls him back. Matt taps _ignore_ , and turns off his phone.

He doesn’t realize he’s wandered back to Hell’s Kitchen until he catches the smell of the cathedral. St. Patrick’s is where his dad used to go, never so often as his grandmother would have wanted, usually only on Christmas Eve and maybe a few days in between. _Don’t have time,_ he’d said, but after Matt had been in the accident he’d always been able to hear the lie, hear the nervousness. Something had chased his father out of the church, the same way it’s chased Matt out. _Devil,_ he thinks. _Murdock boys got the devil in ‘em._ He’s not supposed to be able to walk in here, not with what he’s done, but the lights are on, and when he touches his fingertips to the holy water it doesn’t burn. There’s a priest in a side-room, coming to the door when Matt whacks his cane just too hard against the stones.

“Hello,” he says.

Matt wets his lips. “Hello.”

The priest looks at him for a long time, and then says, “The confessional’s at the back. If you want it.”

“I don’t know why I came in here,” Matt says.

“You look like you have a lot on your mind.”

His phone is heavy and cold in his pocket, and he thinks about turning it back on, picking it up when Darcy tries again, saying, _Darcy, please, just—don’t hate me, but_ —

( _You’re wrong about her._ )

“If you decide,” says the priest, “I’ll get ready.”

Matt swallows a few times, and folds his hands over the top of his cane.

“Please,” he says.

The seat’s cold, but there’s a tiny space heater tucked under the bench. It’s making the damp on his pant legs steam, too small for anyone to notice, really, but the curls of heat in the air make him think of cat’s tails. The priest takes a little longer to get settled, but when he turns, Matt still hasn’t thought of anything to say.

“It’s been—” he can’t think. He can’t remember. Since before he left St. Agnes, at least. “I don’t remember my last confession.”

He thinks the priest might say something, but he only hums. Lantom, Matt remembers. The name on the sign out front was Lantom. The frost had traced it out with icy fingers. He swallows a few times, and rubs his hands against his knees, trying to wipe the sweat from his palms.

“I don’t know why I came here,” he says. “I haven’t—I haven’t in a long time.”

Lantom leans back. He has an old cigarette habit, Father Lantom. He hasn’t touched one in years, but there are still traces clinging to his fingers, and he has a nicotine patch scraping against the inside of his robes, peeling up at one corner as the adhesive wears off. “Maybe you’re just looking for someone to listen to whatever it is you have to say.”

Something snaps apart in his mouth. It might be a laugh. “Believe me,” Matt says. “The last thing I want to do is talk. I’m—I’m not good at it.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Lantom shifts. He folds his hands between his knees. “Don’t have anyone to talk to?”

“The people I would talk to are—” He stops. Matt rubs at his eyes. “It’s complicated.”

“Things usually are.”

He thinks it’s supposed to be a joke. There’s nothing very funny about this. The longer Matt says nothing, the more still the priest becomes. When he resettles his foot against the floorboards, the noise of it cracks like a gunshot.

“When—when I was eighteen, I met this girl.” Matt takes off his glasses, folds them up into his hand. It feels wrong to wear them, here. Like an insult. If anyone knows what he does, if anyone knows what’s wrong with him, wouldn’t it be God? “That sounds so—that sounds like the start of a romantic comedy, Christ.”

“Language,” says the priest.

“Sorry, Father.”

Lantom dips his head once, and goes silent again. The inside of his mouth seems to be scraping against itself. Matt wets his lips, knocks his head to the back of the confessional. He wants to bolt. He shouldn’t be this twitchy, he knows better, he knows what could happen if someone notices him reacting to things he shouldn’t be able to react to, but Christ, _Christ,_ he can’t stop moving. He fidgets with the earpiece of his glasses.

“So. This—the girl. She was in one of my classes, and, um. Sometimes, with people, you can—you can tell when someone’s going to matter. Maybe you don’t know how, or why. Not—not when you meet them. But you can tell they’re going to be important. It’s like—it’s like some part of you recognizes them. And it was like that, with her. But at the time, I didn’t—I didn’t know how much—”

He stops.

“How much what?” says Lantom, very quietly. He’s almost like a voice in Matt’s head. “How much she would come to matter to you?”

_How much of me would recognize her._

Matt runs a hand over his face. His fingers come away damp. He’s not sure if it’s sweat, or something else. “We’ve, uh. There’s never been anything between us, not—not like that. She’s not—it didn’t happen. I don’t—she and my roommate, and me, we’re all friends. Have been since—since a while. Sometimes it feels like they’re the only people I’ve ever had in the world.”

In the box, Lantom smooths his fingers over his robes, sorting out wrinkles. “No parents?”

“My dad died when I was ten,” Matt says, wooden. _My dad died when I was ten and it was my fault._ But that isn’t this. “And after—”

_Regular people, they’re not meant for us, Matty. We’re better than them. We move between them, not with them. We’re their ghosts. We’re their goddamn fucking nightmares._

“After?”

He twists the earpiece. “I didn’t have anyone else, before. Just—just them.”

“But that’s different now?”

( _Hello,_ _she says, and there’s blood under her fingernails, bruises on her ribs and down her arms, the wind caught in her hair and the city trapped beneath her collar, overwhelming—_ )

“I met someone,” Matt says. “A few months ago, I met someone. And it’s like…I don’t know.” _Like a fever,_ he thinks. _Like a firestorm._ “There are things about me that she knows that I’ve never told anyone. Things that—that I never expected to ever tell anyone.”

“What things?”

He laughs, and it comes out raw and cracking. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Lantom opens his mouth. Then he closes it again, and waits.

“I’ve never known anyone like her.” Matt turns the earpiece again, and again. The screw is whining in the socket, the metal ready to snap. “She’s—she’s indescribable. But she makes sense, in a way that—that I can’t even explain. She makes _sense_. And I just—”

“You love her,” says Lantom. Salt catches on Matt’s eyelashes, scrapes. It makes a sound like wet sand.

“Yes,” he says, and shuts his eyes. “God, I—yes.”

“So far I don’t see the problem.”

 _Breathe,_ he thinks. _In and out. Breathe._ Outside, there’s a woman lighting a candle. She smells like baby powder, and her husband’s abusing her. He can tell by the way she’s walking, by the way she flinches when the door shuts behind some of the parishioners. Her head’s bowed and she has a crack in her right ulna. Every time she takes a step her whole body screams at him. _In and out._ “Yesterday, she—she’s, um. She asked me, about—about the girl.”

“About your friend?”

“They’re friends.” Matt swallows. “They’re—generally I don’t—but they’re friends. And I think it surprised—it surprised both of them, because my friend, she doesn’t—she didn’t expect it. And E—”

“E?”

“We call her E. I mean—my friend, she calls her E, and—and I picked it up.” He takes a breath, lets it out. “E isn’t—she’s not…she doesn’t meet a lot of people that she—she thinks are worth her time. But they’re friends, and—and it’s not—my roommate thinks it should worry me, how close they are. But it doesn’t. It’s not—I like that they’re friends. I—they’re close, and that’s—”

 _(Darcy reaching out, yanking at the back of his sweatshirt until he comes down between them, and Elektra rests her chin on his shoulder as she watches the way Darcy’s hands move, back and forth, and something creeps up into his ribs, burning—_ )

( _You’re in love with her, and I’m—_ )

“Can I ask you a question?” Matt says, because that’s easier than talking. Listening has always been easier than talking. Father Lantom folds his fingers together.

“If you want.”

“Do you—” Christ, why is he asking this? His whole body’s in knots. “Do you think that it’s possible to be in love with two people at once? For—for three people to fall in love the way two might?”

For the first time, he thinks, Lantom’s actually surprised. He shifts a little in his chair, his breathing changing, turning his head just a little as if he’s trying to get a look at Matt. He doesn’t say anything, not for a long time. Then, finally, he lifts his face towards the ceiling, like he’s looking for an answer that can’t be found.

“That’s not how this is supposed to work, you know,” he says, after a moment. “Confession. I’m supposed to listen, not to judge. Certainly not offer an opinion.”

“And that’s not an answer.”

Lantom smooths away another invisible wrinkle. “Do _you_ think it’s possible?”

“Do you think I’d be asking if I knew?”

Father Lantom hums. He crosses his arms over his chest. “That’s not much of an answer, either.”

His glasses are going to break if he keeps pulling. Matt curls his hand over the lenses, and picks at one of his cuticles.

“What makes you ask?” says Father Lantom. “There has to be some kind of reason.”

“Just—” He picks, and picks. His thumbnail’s too short to get a good angle, but there’s already a scrape along his fingernail from hitting concrete wrong. It doesn’t take very long before the pain starts. “I know how E is. And—and I know how my friend is. I’m—I know how they are. And I—there’s…there’s something. Between them, there’s—there’s something. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not—I can’t explain it. I just—”

(— _Elektra touches the very tips of her fingers to the side of Darcy’s neck and there’s warmth blossoming all through her, and she doesn’t even know, but Christ, it’s like he’s feeling it inside his own skin, and he can’t say it’s not something he’s felt before, not with this, not with them—_ )

“Are you jealous of it?”

“Chr—no. I don’t—I’m not.” And he’s telling the truth, because he _isn’t._ That’s partially why it’s so terrifying. He can feel the power of whatever it is, how it’s building up, how it’s growing, but it doesn’t frighten him, and that—that’s what’s petrifying. It scares the living shit out of him. “And even if I was, it’s—I don’t have a right to be.”

“You don’t have a right to be?”

“I’m not jealous of it,” Matt says.

Lantom sighs through his nose, just a little. Like he’s exasperated. “What are they like?” he says, and Matt laughs. He wants to hide his face in his hands. Jesus, what kind of question is that? That’s not a question he can just— _answer,_ like there’s no problem. “You said that your—that E makes sense, to you. What about your friend, does she make sense?”

He tries to breathe, and comes up empty. “That’s—it’s not the same.”

“But she does make sense.”

He swallows, shuts his eyes. “Sometimes it seems like they’re the only people in the world who ever have.”

Lantom glances at him sidelong. He breathes in through his nose, and holds it for a second. “What’s she like? Your friend.”

He has to think for a long time, about that. “Intense,” Matt says. “In—in a similar way. Not the same, but she’s—” He can’t come up with a word. “She’s…she’s loud.”

“Is that bad?”

“No.” Christ, no. “It’s not even intentional on her part. She’s—she talks a lot, sure, but it’s that feeling that—I don’t know. If you’re in a room with her, you know it. She just—she grabs you. Like a magnet. It’s always been like that. She’s magnetic. She—she grabs your attention just by being there. And—and you want her to.”

“Do you think it’s like that for everyone?” says Lantom. “Or just for you?”

 _Jesus Christ._ If Lantom had pinned him down and started peeling his skin off in chunks, it couldn’t be more excruciating than this. Matt runs his hands up over his face and into his hair, hunching the way someone does when they’re trying not to get kicked in the stomach.

“Backtrack,” says Lantom. Matt presses his fingers to his eyes. His control is gone, but God, he can’t bring himself to care at the moment. “Your girlfriend, E. You said something about how she doesn’t see most people as being worth her time. Why do you think your friend is?”

“Is this a psychiatrist’s office now?”

“You’re the one who asked my opinion,” Lantom says mildly. “I’m just trying to establish one.”

Matt turns his glasses over in his hand. The lenses smear. Not that it really matters, he thinks. It’s not like he can see through them. Still, it’s asymmetrical. He wipes it clean on the hem of his shirt. “I think she likes that—that Darcy isn’t intimidated. By her.”

“Are a lot of people intimidated by her?”

He’s tempted to laugh. How else is he supposed to react? _Are a lot of people intimidated by her?_ She’s Elektra Natchios. The world is intimidated. “I think the only people who aren’t are me and my friend.”

“And that means something to her. Your girlfriend.”

 _That means everything to her,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t say that. He’s not sure Elektra even knows how much it means. “Darcy’s not scared of her. She’s never been scared of her. And at first I think—I think Elektra was confused, but now it’s…it’s important to her. ”

“I see.” Lantom threads the hem of his sleeve through his fingers. “What about—Darcy. You said her name’s Darcy?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you think she’s not intimidated?”

“Darcy never lets anyone intimidate her,” he says. “That’s—that’s who she is.”

“But you think there’s something deeper than that.”

( _I want to hurt him,_ Darcy says. _I want—he shouldn’t be able to do that._ )

( _I told her everything I could, and she didn’t run away._ )

“Yeah.” It snaps off in his mouth. “Yeah, it’s—it’s way deeper than that.”

“Like Elektra’s recognized her too,” says Lantom, and yes, that’s it, that’s _exactly_ it, that’s the thing that’s been eluding him for days, that sense of _you, I know you, you’re going to be important._ That’s what Elektra’s been struggling with saying. That’s it.

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.” Father Lantom cracks his knuckles. The bones scrape inside his hands like shovels. "You said E asked you something. Do you mind if I ask what it was?”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Seems to have made you think about this. I’d say it’s relevant.”

He knows two languages and can read a third alphabet, but he can’t think of a word to say.

“Did she ask if you’re in love with her?” Father Lantom turns towards the lattice, tipping his head. “Darcy. Did Elektra ask if you’re in love with her?”

( _You’re in love with her, and I’m—_ )

( _Falling,_ he thinks, and there’s no one to contradict him.)

“I can’t be,” says Matt. His voice cracks. “I shouldn’t be.”

“That’s not the same as saying you’re not.”

(— _Matt,_ she says, _Matt,_ and her fingers on his elbow leave marks behind like scars—)

“I can’t be,” he says again. “I—you’re not supposed to be able to do that. People aren’t supposed to be like that. You don’t—you can’t be in love with two people at once.”

“Who says that?”

“Everyone.” He raises his hands, and lets them fall. “Morality. Ethics. Common sense.”

“All of which change with the times.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be the one telling me that, Father.”

Father Lantom sucks his teeth. “There are people who can be, you know. In love with more than one person. It’s not common, but it can happen.”

“It’s not supposed to be possible.”

“I think there are a lot of LGBTQIA rights groups across the nation that will say different.”

He knows that. Just—that’s—he’s not—he can’t think. His brain won’t work. He can’t _think._ “I can’t still be—I can’t still be in love with her. Not—not if I’m in love with Elektra.”

“Were you in love with her before you met Elektra?”

 _Yes._ It’s strangling him. _God, yes. I was. I am. I can’t be, but I am._ “I don’t know.” The words crack. “I don’t—I don’t know.”

More silence.

“Do you know what I think?” Lantom says, and Matt scoffs in the back of his throat.

“That this is irrational?”

“On the contrary,” he says. “I think it’s completely rational. I think you’re terrified, because you have feelings for both of these women—and regardless of what the world thinks of that, I don’t believe you would be so torn about it if those feelings weren’t real. You have genuine feeling for the pair of them, and you don’t know what to do with it, and you don’t know what to do with the feelings they seem to have for each other. I think you believe you need to tear yourself apart in order to manage it, because it doesn’t match what any of us are told a perfect relationship looks like.” Lantom takes a deep breath. “Do I think three people can fall in love? I don’t know. That’s a question for you and for them, not for me. But there’s one thing that I’ve always believed about people, and questions that they can never answer.”

“Yeah?” Matt puts his glasses back on, hooks the rims over his ears. “What’s that?”

“I think that humanity makes anything possible.”

.

.

.

She doesn’t expect him back for days. Matthew turns up seventeen hours later.

Elektra opens the door and looks at him, leaning into the frame. She crosses her arms over her chest. His eyelashes are wet, his hair damp from the snow. His face—she’s not sure what to make of his face. There are rings under his eyes like he hasn’t slept, and something new etched into lines around his mouth, something a little like grief, though he hasn’t lost either of them. Good luck convincing him of that.

“Where did you go?” she says, finally. Matthew lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

“Confession.”

She can’t recall Matthew ever going to church before now, but she doesn’t say anything about it. Elektra waits. Matthew heaves a breath, and takes off his glasses, folding them up.

“You’re right,” he says, very quiet. “I—you’re right.”

She searches his face. When she reaches out, her palms are a little damp, but when she hooks them into the lapels of his peacoat he doesn’t push her off. Something unwinds in her throat, a strand of terror that he might leave her, that he might try to go. “What do you want to do?”

He stands. Then he settles his hands against her hips, light, careful, like he thinks she might shove him away. The longer she goes without moving, the tighter he holds on, until she knows she’s going to find bruises on her skin later. “I don’t know.”

“Are you going to talk to her?”

He shakes his head, not in a no, just…exhausted. “I don’t know.”

She can’t think of what to say, for a moment. Elektra puts her palms to his throat, to his jaw. His eyes are a little red, and it _aches_ , seeing that. She’s not sure when seeing him sad started making her ache.

“It’s like something in me is broken,” he says. “People aren’t supposed to be this greedy.”

“You,” she says, “are not broken. You’re—you’re mine. You’re not broken.”

“You don’t keep broken things,” Matthew says.

“Only very rarely. And you’re not one of them.” She goes up on her toes, and sets her lips to the corner of his mouth. Matthew lets out a shuddering breath. “You’re not a monster, Matthew. Not for this, not—not for anything. You’re mine, and you’re not a monster, and I—”

 _—love you_ , she thinks, but she can’t say that, she doesn’t know _how_ to say it, so she just kisses him, standing very still and holding on and hoping that he can taste it on her mouth. _You’re mine, and you’re not broken, and I love you._

She’s still kissing him when Matthew starts to cry.

.

.

.

“When did you know?”

It’s been three days. Neither of them have really said a word, not for any of it. Words are too much. They’re the same, him and Elektra, and he thinks Darcy might be a little like this too, that when you feel so much and think so much and care so much words just don’t mean anything anymore. He turns his face up to her, to where she’s curled into the arm of the couch with her fingers tracing patterns along the back of his head. The floor’s cold under his feet, and the sofa’s too soft against his back, but he doesn’t want to move to the cushions. He’s not sure he _can_ move, right now.

“That you were in love with her,” Elektra says, like this needs clarifying. She’s stopped raking her nails through his hair, just sits there with her fingers pressed into the nape of his neck and her knees drawn up against her chest, like when her father had called, like when she hadn’t cried but wanted to. He turns his face to the coffee table again.

“When did you?” he says, and she stops breathing for a second. Her heart skips. Elektra tucks her nails into his scalp again, twice.

“I don’t know.”

It’s truth. His lungs shake. Matt turns his head, tips into her hand just for a moment. He shifts around to press his shoulder into the couch.

“You’ve known her longer than me,” Elektra says. “You don’t know when it started?”

“When it started? No. That—a while. That’s all I can think. Just—I don’t know.”

Elektra hums, and waits. For someone who’s always been so impatient, she’s being strikingly careful now. It might have just as much to do with her as it does with him, but he’s not sure he knows how to ask.

“I knew.” He shuts his eyes. “I always knew. I just—didn’t look at it.”

For some awful reason, Elektra’s lips quirk up. “ _I cannot fix on the hour,_ ” she says, “ _or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun._ ”

“What’s that from?”

“ _Pride and Prejudice._ ” The smile widens a little. “Which is ironic.”

Silence again.

“There’s a word for this,” she says. “I think it’s strange that there’s a word for this.”

“Really?”

“Darcy told me.”

He chokes on a laugh. “Of course she did.”

“Polyromantic,” Elektra says, as if she’s tasting the flavor. “ _Poly_ romantic. It doesn’t seem big enough.”

It seems like a word, really. Words are never big enough. She scuffs his hair with her fingers again, and Matt reaches up, waiting quietly. When she takes his hand, pushing her thumbnail into the base of his palm, he’s not quite sure what to do next. Elektra knows, and she hasn’t left, and she’s—impossibly, they’re the same again, diving past the same line and caught up in the same person, and that’s—there’s not a word for that, not in any language on the planet, dead, dying, or not.

 _We’re the same,_ he thinks. _We two. We’re the same._

(And Darcy, what about Darcy—)

“I think,” Elektra says, “that we should tell her.”

Matt brushes his thumb down the side of her hand, scraping a little against calluses on her knuckles. “I don’t know that I can.”

Elektra unfolds herself from the couch, and slides off onto the floor, settling with her knees bracing his hips, leaning back onto his legs. She touches her thumb to his lip, to his neck. “Do you want to?”

 _God, yes._ He wants to put his hands on her skin and set his mouth to her throat and have her speak, swallow her words and keep her near. He wants to fight with her. He _wants_ that, he wants to know what it would be like to go into the ring against Darcy Lewis, because even if he could beat her, he doesn’t think he would win. He pulls his hand out of Elektra’s, and pushes her hair back up out of her face with all of his fingers, tracing the lines of her bones, sharp and cutting through her skin. A mouth like a secret. Long lashes. She closes her eyes and lets him do it, this last kind of intimacy that she’s never asked for and he’s never given, not until now.

“I can’t,” he says, and her eyes flutter open. “Not yet. Not—not until I’m sure.”

Elektra presses both hands to his chest, fingers spread on either side of his breastbone. She searches his face. “Tell her what you are,” she says. “Let her see you, finally. You’ll be sure, then.”

Matt can’t help it. He presses his fingers to her cheeks. “When did you get wise?”

“When did you get stupid?” she says, and the laugh shatters in his chest. She leans into him, her hair falling forward as she sets her lips to the corner of his mouth, lightly. It’s tender, something she tries so hard not to be. She keeps failing, lately. When he kisses her, she tastes not like fire but like smoke.

“I love you,” he says, and Elektra smiles into his mouth.

“I’ve known that for ages, Matthew.”

“Don’t be smug, E,” Matt says.   

.

.

.

Matt and Elektra started dating in October, she thinks. Now it’s February, and something’s—something’s happened. They haven’t said anything, but there’s something, and it’s obvious.

Well. To her, it’s obvious. Foggy thinks Elektra picked a fight, but Darcy’s not so sure about that. “They move around each other like they’re bruised, Foggy,” she says, and Foggy huffs and replies, “Elektra’s the literature major, not you,” which…is accurate but doesn’t change the fact that that’s what they’re doing. They move like they’re bruised. They don’t angle around each other, though. They push into each other’s dark spots and accept the ache, and so she’s fairly certain that means they’re going to be okay.

She asks Matt what happened, once. It’s going way beyond whatever boundaries they’ve erected, about him and Elektra, about Elektra and Matt, but she asks anyway because she can’t stand seeing them look the way they do right now, as if they’re adrift somewhere with no way to get back to shore. Matt shakes his head. “I’m okay. We’re okay. Just—don’t worry.”

“You’re sure,” she says, and when he nods, she catches a snatch of something in his face that makes her think of shadow. He’s hiding something, she realizes. He’s not lying to her, not quite, but he’s hiding something, squirreling it away behind his glasses. _How long has he been hiding things from me?_

( _A partner, a partner, Elektra has a partner, and there’s only two people in the world that she spends any time with and one of them is me—_ )

“We’ll be okay,” he says, and draws his fingertips along the back of her wrist. “Please, just—we’ll be okay. I need a little time.”

“Time for what?”

“Just—” He swallows. “Darcy, I’ll—I’ll tell you soon. Okay? Just—I need a little time.” 

Darcy searches his face. Over in the booth, Elektra and Foggy are in a spat about something, though she thinks they’re actually enjoying the argument more than anything. Foggy looks downright surprised about it, but Elektra’s pleased. When she looks back to Matt, there’s such a raw, awful look on his face that she can’t breathe. “Hey,” she says, and she steps into him without thinking about it, pressing her face into his chest and wrapping her arms around him underneath the fabric of his peacoat, trying to hold the pieces together. He’s shaking like he’s run a marathon, and when he lets himself fall into her, he’s holding her so tightly she thinks he might already be broken. “Hey,” Darcy says again, much softer, and his breathing catches. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t—you don’t have to tell me anything, okay? You don’t need to do anything. Just—you’re okay.”

Matt curls his fingers tight into her hair, and says nothing. Darcy shuts her eyes and holds on, hurting all over and wondering if this isn’t bruising her, too. It doesn’t last for more than a minute, though it feels longer than that. When he unlocks himself, when he steps away from her, he’s schooled his face into something acceptable. There’s a damp place against his cheek.

“You never have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” says Darcy. “Just—I want you to know that.”

Matt touches his thumb to the point of her chin, and shakes his head. He drops his hand. “I will,” he says, and there’s something in his face, in his voice—it’s deeper, somehow. Not hoarse, but deeper, as if there’s a meaning she can’t even begin to guess at. “I want to tell you. I just—give me a little more time.”

And there’s nothing she can say to that, because he’s turned and walked away before she can come up with the words.

Just before Valentine’s Day Elektra drops the bomb that she’s moving. “Tomorrow, actually,” she says, while Darcy makes surprised noises and Matt, on the couch in the living room, snorts like there’s some kind of joke. “To the Garment District.”

“Not Greenwich?” he says, and Elektra actually rolls her eyes.

“There were strenuous objections on that front. Besides, the Garment District is closer to Columbia.”

The Garment District is also expensive as all fucking hell, so Darcy has no idea how Elektra can afford it, but she’s learned not to ask. “Do you like—are there things we need to move, or—”

“I’ve already packed everything I’m taking from this place and shifted it over,” she says. “I just—I need furniture. I want you both to come with me.”

It’s not the oddest thing that E’s invited her along on, but she still glances once at Matt (who doesn’t lift his head, suddenly absorbed in whatever he’s reading) before she says, “I mean, if you want me.”

“I do,” says Elektra, and there’s no further discussion on the matter.

Really, though, the apartment in the Garment District feels—it feels more like Elektra. It’s angled in odd places, not a corner but a sixth-floor flat. “It used to be two,” she says, as Darcy wanders through the empty rooms. “They knocked down the divider when they realized how many people wanted to buy property in here, how much they could get for a bigger place.”

“So it sat on the market for like three years and no one could afford it, is what you’re saying,” says Darcy, touching her fingertips to the old wainscoting. There aren’t any bars on the windows, though she thinks (and when she looks later, she knows) that there used to be. There are old holes dug deep into the brick outside. “Well, except you.”

Elektra smiles, soft and secret, before ducking away into the kitchen. The floor’s made of wood, not linoleum or plastic, and the counters are all dark. Not marble, Darcy doesn’t think, but some kind of heavy stone.

“What kind of furniture are you even looking for, E?” she says, as Matt traces his fingers over the walls, finds edges and corners. She’s pretty sure he’s never been here before, either.

“All of it,” says Elektra. “Well, I have a bed. Dishes and kitchen things, I have those. My father won’t notice that the coffee machine is gone, he never uses that apartment even when he drags himself up to the city.”

“So living room furniture?”

“Among other things.” Elektra lifts herself up onto the counter, and watches as Darcy picks her way through the cupboards. She’s worn her hair up today, for once. It’s also frizzy, Greek curls that spray out from her face in a way that reminds Darcy of a thorn bush. She’s known Elektra straightens her hair for a very long time, but she’s never seen her natural. “I have a rug coming in already. My brother is sending it over. It should be here in a day or two.”

“How long have you been planning this, E?” Darcy says, and E smiles again.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I wasn’t going to do it until after graduation, but—I like this place. It’s closer to the city.”

It also has a fire escape, Darcy thinks, watching E out of the corner of her eye. That might mean the same thing.

Elektra doesn’t want to go to any of the well-known furniture stores, so they end up wandering through tiny places, antique shops and secret warehouses with odd smells and old salesmen who speak only Greek. Darcy’s not even sure that Elektra needs them there; Matt can’t exactly help with color selection, and Darcy can only swear in Greek (thanks, Jen) so it’s not like she can help barter. They’re herded around anyway, and even if Matt and Elektra are both black and blue with whatever fight they’ve had, they’re at least getting along well enough to get Elektra’s furniture sorted. She even wrangles three-day delivery, which is a miracle in the city. (“The owner of the last place owes my father a lot of money,” Elektra says, while they’re in the taxi on the way back to Columbia. “I told him this will pay off part of it.”

“Does your father know you told him that?”

“I’ll tell him in a few days,” she says, and turns to look out the window, her hand knotted through Matt’s on Matt’s knee. “He can deal with it.”

“That,” says Darcy, “sounds like you’ve been spending too much time with me,” and Elektra makes her happy cracking noise.)

It’s the day after the delivery, and Darcy’s sitting on her old bed in Jen’s apartment with Darla curled up on her lap when she hears the clanking on her fire escape. She thinks it’s a pigeon, at first (the bastards will fight one floor up, sometimes, and throw feathers and bird shit everywhere). Then the noise comes again, and when she looks up, someone’s standing by her window. She’s lunging for the baseball bat she keeps under her bed when Elektra crouches down, and taps two knuckles against the glass.

“Jesus,” Darcy says, and nearly puts a hand to her heart. She can’t tell if she’s scared or not anymore. She flicks the latch, heaves it open. “Jesus Christ, E, you scared the shit out of me.”

“No, I didn’t,” says Elektra, looking pleased. “If you were really frightened you would have run away.”

“You could’ve warned me you were gonna start dropping in on my fire escape.”

“I could have.” E settles on the grating, sticking her arms and legs through the rails. She turns, just enough to peer at Darcy out of the corner of her eye. “But I didn’t. It was more fun this way.”

“Sadist,” Darcy says, but it’s not an insult. She heaves herself out onto the fire escape, and settles next to Elektra, not close enough to touch her, but close. Her socks have pandas on them, and it feels weird to let them just…dangle free in space, but after a minute or two the metal warms up. “If it snows while we’re out here, I’m blaming you.”

Elektra hums.

“You out and about, tonight?” The words feel oddly weighted, in her mouth. As if they’re bullets. “Wandering around and doing the do?”

“I wanted to see if I could get in and out of my apartment without being seen.” Elektra folds her hands together. They’re gloved, Darcy realizes. She’s all in black and wearing gloves, but there’s a thick red scarf wound around her neck, stained through with dark patters that look almost like raindrops. _Blood,_ Darcy realizes, and that should make her sick, but it doesn’t. Her heart’s beating very fast. “And if I could get to yours.”

“I’m on the sixth floor.” Same as Elektra, she realizes.

“Not that hard if you come from the roof.”

She twists, and looks up. There are seven floors to her building, so no, she supposes it’s not that difficult. Just— “How did you get on the roof?”

Elektra’s eyes crinkle at her. She doesn’t say anything.

“Oh, right,” Darcy says, and knocks her elbow into E’s ribs. “Sassassin.”

“English.”

“Shut up.”

Her eyes crinkle again. Elektra turns, looks out at the alleyway. There’s not really anything interesting out here, not unless you know about the stripper in the apartment across the street, but Darcy pasted a note in her window ages ago to let the guy know that he needs curtains before the super starts selling nude pics. There had been a _Thank you!_ written in purple paint on the inside of the guy’s window for three weeks after that, though sometimes he does forget to shut the curtains and the whole building gets a show. Elektra shifts her weight, and her hip brushes against Darcy’s.

“Have you spoken to Matthew?”

Darcy shuts her eyes. She rests her forehead to the railing, letting the metal bite her. “No.”

She hums. Elektra rests her hands to the railing, leaning back to look at the sky. “You can never see the stars, here,” she says. “Where I grew up it was like the entire sky was stars.”

“In Greece?”

“My mother’s family owns a little island off the coast,” she says. “Very small, but—but we were the only people there. So at night, it was—the sea swallowed up the moon, and the whole world was on fire with the light.”

Her mouth curls a little bit as she says it, as if it’s familiar, as if it’s ironic. Darcy’s not entirely sure what’s funny about it, but she folds her arms around the railing, watching E. She can’t look away.

“He knows I spoke to you,” Elektra says. “Why haven’t you asked him?”

She chews the inside of her cheek. Darcy looks up at the sky, at the yellowing clouds. “I don’t know.”

( _There’s a second vigilante, a second one, a man, and God, I think_ —)

“I’ll take you there,” says Elektra. “Eventually. To the island.”

It’s not an apology, not quite. Darcy still leans into her, shuts her eyes and breathes. Elektra twitches like Darcy’s just snapped her with electricity. Then she turns, rests her cheek to Darcy’s hair. When she speaks, it’s in Greek, soft and rolling, foreign and familiar. Darcy can’t make out the words.

“What did you say?”

Elektra lifts her hand, and brushes Darcy’s bangs out of her face. “That I have to go,” she says, and unfolds herself from the grating. “Go back inside. It’s cold.”

Darcy doesn’t go back inside. She sits there until her hands are numb, and watches the clouds change.

_I legitimately can’t tell who you’re in love with, anymore._

.

.

.

They’re in the lounge in Carman Hall and Foggy’s just left to meet up with a study group when he realizes it. Darcy’s next to him on the couch, feet tucked underneath his leg and a pencil in her hair, tapping absentmindedly at the page of her history book in time with the music she has running on her iPod, and God, they’re too similar, him and her. ( _Mine,_ the monster in the back of his head says, _predator, familiar, mine,_ and he can’t argue with it when she’d leaned into Elektra, bloodstained Elektra, without a second of hesitation, like baring her throat to a rabid animal and trusting it not to bite her.) He needs to be the one to say it, because he’s the one who has the facts. He wonders if that’s why Elektra had tugged him along to Darcy’s building, if that’s why she’d left him on the roof to listen, to make him realize, or to make him remember. _I don’t know,_ Darcy had said, and with Darcy that means she’s never going to voice it. If he doesn’t say it, neither of them will, and God, Elektra had been right. _If you keep treating her like she’s fragile and pretending nothing’s happening, then you’re going to make it break._

_I can’t lose this. I can’t lose you. Please, don’t let it break._

“Can I talk to you?” Matt says, before he can stop himself.

Darcy stills. His hands feel damp, cold. Matt hides them in his pockets. She takes a breath, lets it out, and looks at the doorway where Foggy’s disappeared. Darcy licks her lips.

“Yeah,” she says, a little hoarse. “Yeah, sure. Okay.”

“Not here.” Darcy’s one thing, Foggy’s another, and he’d rather not have the whole world ripped apart between his feet. _I told her everything I could, and she didn’t run away_ , and he’s not sure where that leaves him, not in space or in time. He curls his fingers into his palms. “Can we—we should walk.”

Her only answer is to grab her coat off the back of the couch.

Matt brings his cane, but Darcy slips her arm through his anyway as they turn right out of the door of the dorms and head down 116th. He thinks his hands might tremble a little when she does it, because she’s not stupid. She’s smart enough to have guessed, and she hasn’t said a word. She still hooks into his elbow and walks in step with him, even as her breathing wavers and catches. They walk very quietly for about half an hour, until she tugs at his sleeve. “Can we go in here?”

It’s a coffee shop. Crowded, noisy. He can’t remember ever thinking about this place before. He doesn’t recognize any of the scents or sounds of the people inside, though, and that decides him. “Sure.”

Either Darcy has unholy luck, or he does, because when they walk in there’s a booth towards the back that’s open. Matt sits and waits, elbows on the table, fingers laced together against his mouth. He realizes once she gets in line that it makes him look like he’s praying, though that’s definitely not out of the realm of possibility. He can’t think about every other thing Elektra’s said about this, about why he’s so terrified—because he _is_ terrified, for more reasons than he can name—because if he does he’s going to lose his nerve.

_If we lose her because you don’t tell her the truth, then I swear to God I will never, ever forgive you._

(They’ve been together for almost five months now, him and Elektra, and he knows what her voice sounds like when she’s lying and how she sounds when she’s telling the truth, and none of it, none of what she’s said about Darcy has ever been a lie, and Christ, he’s not doing this because of what Elektra said, not because of any of it, he’s doing this because he needs to know if E’s right, he can’t not know—)

She comes back with two mugs, and sets the second one on the table in front of him. She still hasn’t said a word. Darcy peels off her gloves, shoving them into her coat pocket, and wraps her chilly fingers around the coffee cup. For a second, he almost asks where she’s put his cup; then he remembers. Matt doesn’t reach out for it.

“So?” she says, when the silence stretches. “What did you want to talk to me about?” 

His throat’s too dry. Matt takes off his gloves, lays his hands flat on the table. Someone’s sanded away the word _fuck_ , carved into the wood, but they haven’t quite managed to get the whole thing out. He can still trace the shapes of the letters with his fingertips. When he opens his mouth, the words stick, and he coughs. Darcy watches him, still curled around her mug.

“I don’t know what you’re going to say,” he says, finally. It’s the only thing that his brain will actually focus on, right now. “If—when I tell you, I don’t know what you’re going to say. Or do. And I—”

 _Please don’t leave._ He can taste them, the words. _Please, God, I need you, don’t leave me._ And Elektra, in the back of his head. _I need her._ She doesn’t say it, not aloud, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Darcy and Elektra on Elektra’s couch, and Darcy reaching out to tug him down between them, and he’s a riot, a cacophony, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do or feel or even think anymore. _I need her too, Matthew._

_Do you think it’s possible to be in love with two people at once? For—for three people to fall in love the way two might?_

_I think humanity makes anything possible._

She looks down at the table top. Then she reaches out, and rests the tips of her fingers on the back of his hand, brushing over the tendons. “If you don’t feel comfortable, we don’t have to talk about it. I can—I can call E or something, you don’t—”

“No, just—” He doesn’t pull away from her. Matt runs his other hand over his mouth, trying to breathe. “E—Elektra told you something. She said—she said she’d talked to you.”

He’s not sure what he’s expecting out of her, but it’s not for her to relax. She resettles on the cushion of the booth, and lets her hand rest on his, fingerprints and lifelines. “She told me some stuff, yeah. She said I should ask you about it.”

“You haven’t.”

“I didn’t know how.” Darcy tips her head, leans in and lowers her voice. “What would I have said? Hey, Matt, your girlfriend told me that she goes out at night and beats people up because she enjoys it, and when I asked her if you knew all she said was _ask_. And oh, hey, does this have anything to do with the fact that both of you wind up bruised as shit and then say crap like _oh, motorcycle nearly ran us down?_ Or, you know, anything _at all_ the report Tom Allerdyne filed about two people breaking half the bones in his body in an alleyway near Columbia? Because I really think it does, I think it has to do with every part of that, and how do you _ask_ something like that, Matt? How would that have gone over?”

“Last week? Probably not very well.”

She presses her fingers hard into the back of his hand. “What about now?”

“I don’t know.” He pushes the heel of his palm into his forehead. “I don’t know.”

“Try,” says Darcy, in a voice that he’s never, ever argued with. He’s not about to start now.

When he finishes, she’s silent for so long that he wonders if she’s ever going to speak to him again. He’d excuse himself, run, if not for the fact that her hand’s still resting on his. It’s a millennium before she heaves a deep breath, and gets up.

“Darcy—”

“Move over,” she says, and drops down on his side of the booth. Matt shifts automatically, giving her more room, but she follows just long enough that when she finally sits, it’s with the point of her elbow in his ribs and the curve of her hip pressed alongside his. She leans forward, pulls her coffee mug over to this side, and then tugs off her hat and leaves it on the table. He only realizes that she did it to trap him in here, keep him from leaving, when she braces her foot against the leg of the table, creating a barrier and a tripwire in one.

“Now,” she says, very clearly. “Are you high?”

Matt blinks. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“Really? Because I feel like we should get you tested.” She swirls her coffee in the cup. It’s cooling, but the peppermint smell is still biting sharp at his throat. “Jesus Christ, what the hell were you thinking?”

“Darcy—”

“Don’t you _Darcy_ me, Matt Murdock,” she says, and her voice is shaking, and her hands are trembling, and he thinks she might be about to cry. “Are you _fucking stupid_? Just—just leaving aside everything I heard from E, ignoring the whole—the whole alleyway thing, and what you did to Tom Allerdyne, did you—did you honestly think I would hate you for this?”

“I didn’t—”

“Yeah, you didn’t.” She elbows him hard in the side. “Jesus Christ, Matt. Why the fuck was I supposed to hate you? Because—because of what you can do? Because of your—your friggin’ super-senses? Because you’re going out and—” Darcy stops, presses her fingers to her lips. “I could brain you. I _might_ brain you. Do you think there’s a baseball bat somewhere in here so I can brain you with it?”

Matt swallows, and folds his hands up into fists against his knees. “Is that a rhetorical question?”

Darcy hisses, rearing back like a cobra about to strike. “No. I’m fucking pissed as hell and you do _not_ want to do that with me right now. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“About the felonies or about the chemicals?”

“Any of it. All of it.”

“What the hell was I supposed to have said? Just—you don’t—” He heaves a breath, lets it out again, pushes the heels of his hands hard into his stupid eyes. Stick’s in his head, and he won’t get out. “I didn’t want you to think that—I don’t know.”

“You _do_ know.” She shoves her elbow into him again, and leaves it there, digging between his ribs like a dagger. “You _do_ know. Don’t lie to me and say you don’t know, Matt. Don’t you dare. Tell me.”

His lungs have malfunctioned. He can’t think. He gropes for something, anything to focus on, but he’s been set adrift. When Darcy shifts her weight, takes a breath, her lungs crackle. “I just—I didn’t—I couldn’t risk that.”

“You couldn’t risk trusting me?”

“I couldn’t risk losing you because of what I am,” he snaps at her, and Darcy shudders. She shivers from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, and she shuts her eyes. “I couldn’t—I _can’t_ , Darcy. I can’t.”

She doesn’t respond. She curls her toes in her shoes and keeps her eyes shut hard, pressing her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She’s still shaking. “God.” She picks up her mug, puts it back down again. “God. Have you told Foggy?”

“No.”

“Are you _going_ to tell Foggy?”

“I don’t—I don’t know.”

“So it’s just me?”

“Yes.”

“And E knows you’re telling me all this?”

“Yes.”

Darcy traces one finger along the handle of her mug. Her eyes are wet, and there are tears clinging to her lashes. “And—and all this time you didn’t say anything, about—about who you are, and what you can do, and—not about any of it—you didn’t tell me because you thought—you thought I’d leave? Because you’re different?”

No, that’s not it, not at all, but he can’t find the words to argue with her. “Not—Darcy, no, that’s not what I was doing.”

“How the _hell_ was that not what you were doing?” She scrubs her hands over her eyes. “You thought—Christ. You couldn’t—you didn’t trust me even with that?”

His eyes are burning. “Darcy—”

“Jesus Christ.” She scrubs her hand over her eyes. Then she turns, and fists her hand in the fabric of his shirt, yanking once, hard. “You listen to me. You _listen,_ you understand? I don’t hate you. I could kill you right now, but I don’t hate you. I don’t think I could—I don’t think I could _ever_ hate you.”

He blinks, furiously, because he doesn’t want to cry. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I’m not—I’ve never been what you thought I was, I’m not—I’m not good, Darcy, I’m not what you want me to be—”

“I don’t want you to be anything other than _you_ ,” she says, and God, all at once he’s lost in her so completely that he’s going to fall apart. Tears and pain and the truth in her mouth, hanging like ash in the air. Darcy shakes him again. “You think I’d hate you for that? You think—you think lying to me would make it any better? Why the hell are you telling me this at all?”

“Because I can’t lose you,” he says again. “I can’t. I _can’t_. And I just—”

“You ever think about what would’ve happened to me if _I’d_ lost _you_?” Darcy’s voice breaks. “Jesus, Matt. You—you go out every night, you and E, and you—you do this thing that honestly I should have so much more of a problem with than I do, and you could _die_ , every night you could die, and do you realize that if you’d died without telling me this I would _never have known why_? You’re—you and Foggy are my best friends, you and E—you’re _important_. And if you’d died I would never have known what happened or what you were doing or why you were out there in the first place, either of you, and that would have—fucking hell, Matt. Do you know—do you have any idea what that would have been like? To—to hear from the cops or from Foggy that you were dead _,_ that someone had killed you and not ever have any idea why—”

“Darcy,” he says, or starts to say, but she’s loosened her grip on his shirt. Her shoulders are shaking. Matt doesn’t know if he can touch her, if he should, but he reaches out anyway, and Darcy wraps her arms so tight around his ribs that she pinches. His bones ache. He holds on, tighter and tighter, and he doesn’t let go. He _can’t_ let go. “Darcy—”

“I can’t lose you,” she says. Her cheeks are wet. “You’re—Matt, I _can’t lose you_.”

Matt can’t stop himself. He turns his face into her hair, touches his mouth to her temple. When she shudders again, all down her spine, he fixes on it. Darcy digs her nails into the back of his shirt (she’s wound her arms under his jacket, pushing her fingertips hard into his vertebrae) and presses her face to his neck and breathes, in and out, trembling all over. Her heartbeat echoes against his ribs.

“I’m sorry.” He leans his cheek into her hair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t you fucking apologize.”

“I don’t—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she says. Near the counter, the baristas are muttering about them, wondering if someone should see what’s wrong. He tunes out of that entirely. “Don’t apologize. It makes me want to kill you.”

“Okay.”

“If you ever lie to me again,” she says, “about _anything,_ I’m going to crack your skull open with a mallet.”

“Okay,” he says, ignoring the ache of it. She’s warm and shaking and her heart’s beating far too fast, and it’s killing him. “Okay.”

“And if you die—” her voice pops. “If you die, I will never, ever forgive you. Ever. Not _ever._ ”

“Okay.”

Darcy pushes her nose into his throat, and says, “Shut up now, Matt.”

Matt breathes, his eyes shut. “Okay.”

 _You’ll be sure, then,_ she’d said, and he is. He doesn’t know how to say it yet. But he is.

.

.

.

Darcy waits until it’s two in the morning and Lindsay is asleep before slipping out of her bed, and catching a cab to the GWB.

It’s probably a bad idea for her to be out here this late. She can at least defend herself, now—well, as best she can with like…a few months of krav work under her belt—but wandering around New York at two in the morning isn’t exactly the best decision she’s ever made in her life. But she can’t do anything else, really. She can’t sleep, and she can’t talk to Matt. She can’t talk to E. She definitely can’t talk to Foggy, which is a whole other cascade of bullshit that she doesn’t want to wade into at the moment. So she heads for the George Washington Bridge, because she needs to see the city, and she doesn’t want to have to pay to do it.

Washington Heights is brighter than usual, gleaming like shards of glass. It hurts to look at for too long. When she glances back to Manhattan, the skyscrapers are stabbing into the clouds. She folds her hands over the rails, and rocks back and forth on her feet, trying to breathe. The damp fabric of her gloves fuses with the frosty metal.

_I can’t lose you._

She can’t. She can’t lose him. She can’t lose Foggy and she can’t lose Elektra ( _God, no, not E, please not E_ ) and she can’t lose Matt. Not ever. Not _ever._ It’d probably kill her to lose any of them, slowly and awfully and in three completely different ways, and she just—she _can’t._ She doesn’t know how to say it in any other way, doesn’t know how to make them understand it. She doesn’t know how to make _herself_ understand it.

 _I can’t lose you_ , she’d said, and what she’d meant was _please don’t leave me behind._

She’s stupid. She’s really, really stupid. Her whole body hurts with the utter absurdity. _Shit._ E and the way she’d hooked her hand into Darcy’s pocket, unhesitatingly proprietary, the way E always is. _I didn’t want to lie about it. Not to you._ Matt and his mouth against her hair. _I couldn’t risk losing you because of what I am. I couldn’t—I can’t._ And all the words that are screaming in her head, that have been beating in her bones, building in her throat and in her stomach like cancer: _Please don’t leave me. Please don’t make me lose you._ She’s spent so long telling herself that this is something she’s never going to have, that this is something she’s never even considered, that she hadn’t noticed she’s fallen into the trap of wanting it. How the hell had she been so absolutely and completely _unknowing_ about the whole thing?

_I legitimately can’t tell who you’re in love with, anymore._

_I can’t lose you. Please don’t leave me. I love you._

And she does. She breathes. She does and she is and she will and she has since who knows how long, and she wants to press her face into her hands and _scream._ Because Matt has Elektra, but Elektra isn’t safe the way she was before. Darcy can’t tell herself that Elektra’s an excuse, not now, because now Elektra’s dangerous in a way she’s never, ever been. Darcy catches herself wanting to reach out and touch her at the oddest times: when her teeth are bared and she’s decimating someone on the floor of the gym; when she’s perched on Darcy’s fire escape with her arms and legs tangled in the railing; when she turns her head and lifts her chin and gives her that sideways slanting glance that makes her think of secrets in the dark.

_I didn’t want to lie. Not to you._

Elektra’s not an excuse: she’s a force of nature. She’s lonely, and startling, heartbreakingly honest, funny and vicious and _real_ , and Christ, she would be this stupid. She _would_ be the one to be stupid enough to get a crush on her best friend’s girlfriend. She _would_ be that person to want both of them at once, to be in love with one and tripping into the other completely by accident.  (She’s never thought of it as falling in love; she’s thought of it as stumbling, catching your foot on something you don’t expect, that sick feeling you get when you miss a step on a staircase and land on your face hard enough to break your nose and snap your teeth and bleed, nothing so delicate and dainty as falling into someone’s arms.) She’s not going to ever get them, and she knows that—even if they’ve told her the truth, even if they’ve pulled her into the rhythm of them like they need her, she _knows_ that neither of them would really want that. She’s never had the luck.

Her phone buzzes, and she has to peel her gloves off the railing before she can tug it out of her pocket. _You’re not in your room._ Darcy stares at it for a moment, and then swipes the unlocking code.  

 _Needed a walk_.

E doesn’t waste time. _Where?_ Darcy’s about to turn her phone off when a second text comes in. _Want to show you something._

She taps her thumb against the screen for a moment. _Is it dead or bleeding?_

E sends a little flat-eyed emoji. _Just tell me where you are._

Darcy stares out at the water. She thinks about pitching her phone into it. Then: “Fuck me.”

_GWB, Manhattan side._

Elektra responds in seconds. _Be there in fifteen._

Darcy has no idea what the hell she does to manage it, but Elektra’s there in fifteen minutes, just like she’d said. She wonders if maybe E went looking for her for a while before just doing the regular thing and texting. (The idea that she’d been trying to not bother her, that E had wanted to leave her alone to think, occurs to her for a moment, but that’s…definitely not something Elektra would do, so she dismisses it.) She’s dressed all in black, throat to wrists to ankles. Her hair’s tangled around her face, and she’s stuffed her hands into her pockets. Darcy’s fairly sure she’s wearing gloves. “It’s fucking freezing,” E says, without preamble. “What are you doing out here?”

“Thinking.”

Elektra cocks her head. “You think in strange places.” 

“That’s rich, coming from the girl who likes to hang out on my fire escape.”

“Did you walk out here from Columbia?”

“No, I walked from Guatemala,” Darcy says, and Elektra’s eyebrows snap together in a way that means _you’re angry and I don’t know why but I’m going to kill the things that made you that way until you feel better._ She steps up beside Darcy at the railing, and their elbows knock together. “What’d you want to show me?”

“The city.” Elektra rocks back onto her heels. “You’ve found a pretty good spot, though.”

“I’ve lived here for years, Elektra, I kind of know the city.”

“Not the way I do,” says E. She peeks at Darcy through her lashes, and their elbows knock together again. This time, Elektra doesn’t shift away. “You talked to Matthew today.”

“He told you?”

“No. But he gets a certain look when he talks about things he doesn’t want to.” E pushes her hands deeper into her pockets, leans her head back to look at the sky. Her hair falls away from the long line of her throat, dark and lovely, and Darcy very determinedly does not look at it. “And since Nelson still seems to be in a good mood and you weren’t in your room, there were only so many things he could be talking about.”

“You really think we’re that predictable?”

“I think he’s predictable when it comes to you and Nelson. And you’re predictable when it comes to him, though not really anywhere else.”

“Well, that’s slightly depressing.” Darcy tucks her nose into her scarf. “I don’t like being predictable all that much.”

Elektra rocks back and forth on her feet again. Her shampoo smells like the ocean, somehow. She’s standing just close enough that Darcy can catch hints of it, and it’s distracting. “Matthew’s still more predictable than you. What more do you want?”

“A McMansion on Long Island and all my student loans to magically disappear. Except not really. Not the McMansion part, anyway. They sound hard to clean.”

“They are,” says Elektra. She eyes Darcy again, and then hooks their arms together. “Come on. You need to see this.”

“I can see the city from here.”

“Not the way I see it,” she says again, and pulls Darcy away.

She gets the feeling that Elektra would have made this journey over rooftops if she’d been alone. Darcy has no freaking clue how to even start going about That Parkour Life, though, so they catch a cab instead. Elektra bounces her leg the whole time, staring out the window, snapping at the taxi driver when he doesn’t read her mind and pointing down odd alleys and sidestreets. She’s pretty sure the guy thinks they’re headed towards some kind of drug deal by the time Elektra says, “Here is fine,” and pays him without really looking at the total. (And that corkscrews into her the way it always does, because Darcy’s never, ever considered being able to live like that, having the money for random cab rides and not having to worry about gas and water bills afterwards, how Elektra doesn’t even seem to realize the luck she’s had. It’s bitter and sharp against the roof of her mouth.) E waits on the corner until the taxi cab’s out of sight, and then pulls Darcy into an alleyway. They’re near Columbia, but not too close. LaSalle and Claremont, or around there. “Come on,” she says, and tugs down the ladder of a nearby fire escape. “This way.”

“This is probably illegal,” Darcy says. Elektra doesn’t bother with the ladder—she catches the edge of the fire escape with her fingers, and pulls herself up, turning to look down at Darcy with a cat-smile on her face.

“You really think anything fun I do anymore is legal?”

Darcy can’t help it. She snorts, and starts up the ladder. 

These buildings aren’t very high, so Darcy’s not entirely sure what Elektra expects to show her. _See the city_ to her typically means _see the cityscape,_ so when Elektra stops on the sixth floor of the fire escape—not the roof, but the sixth floor—and settles with her legs hanging out in space, Darcy doesn’t quite know what to do. She sits down next to her, wrapping her arms around the bars. “So?” She swings her legs, hoping one of her flats doesn’t fall off. “What are we looking for?”

“Give it a second.” Usually Elektra’s accent isn’t all that strong, but with some words it just roars out of nowhere, and it always makes Darcy jump. E doesn’t notice; she’s staring down at the street below. It’s close to four in the morning, now, so who knows what she’s looking for. Then, finally, she nudges Darcy’s arm, and points to the brownstone across the way. “There, see? The lights are on.”

One of the flats has a light in the window, yes. Darcy looks at Elektra for a long moment, and then turns to watch again. “Yeah. So?”

“There’s a man in that apartment who runs every day at four in the morning,” Elektra says. “He’s always gone for an hour, and he stops there—” she points at a coffee shop a little down the road, _Kuro Kuma_ , which is in the process of being unlocked by a manager, probably “—to grab two coffees. One’s for him, the other’s for his boyfriend. The boyfriend usually comes back here at about three am, dresses like a bouncer, so he probably works at one of the bars near the university. The running man’s an accountant for big-name construction companies in the city. Well, for their CEOs, anyway.”

Darcy’s never heard Elektra quite so thoughtful. She’s swinging her legs back and forth through the bars, not looking away from the apartment. “What are their names?”

“How am I supposed to know? I’ve never talked to them.” She drops her hand, points at another building. “In there there’s a heroin dealer. White man, maybe in his thirties. He also works as a banker, I think—he moves like one—but mostly he can pay for that apartment because of the heroin.”

“You haven’t taken it from him yet?”

Elektra’s wearing one of her shark smiles when she says, “What makes you think I haven’t before? He’s just a bad boy with bad habits.”

“And I’m sure he’d love to hear that from you.”

“Of course he would.” She points again. “And in there, that flat on the left, there’s a cop family. Or they used to be a cop family. The mother was killed about six months ago, so I don’t know if they qualify anymore. They still act like they do, though, and it’s probably a matter of self-image more than anything. And there used to be a homeless woman living behind the dumpster below us, but she moved, or she died, because her nest is empty. Nobody’s claimed it in three months.”

She’s not quite sure when she started smiling, but she is. Darcy touches her elbow to Elektra’s side, trying to catch her attention. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“I watch people.”

“I mean, I people-watch, too, but I don’t get half of that. This is _Rear Window_ level stuff here.”

“This is how the city works,” says Elektra. “People live here. I used to spend a lot of time wandering alone at night, and when you do that, there’s a certain—you start figuring out which people belong where. And once you get that, you figure out which people are out of place. I can’t hear what Matthew does, and a lot of what I do is circumstance, but the places I know well—I can tell when people aren’t supposed to be there. It…helps.”

For a long time Darcy just looks at her. Elektra’s still watching the building, but there’s a twist to her mouth that says she’s noticed the staring, and she likes it. That, or she doesn’t quite know _why_ Darcy’s staring. Finally, Darcy tips sideways, and rests her head on Elektra’s shoulder. E turns stiff and uncomfortable, freezing like a cat with its fur puffing out, before relaxing all at once, letting out a little breath. “You’re kind of amazing,” says Darcy. Her chest aches, and she tells herself that it’s from the cold. “You know that, right?”

“Of course I do,” Elektra says, but she’s very soft as she says it. “But it’s nice to hear aloud.”

.

.

.

A week goes by, and every time he knocks into Darcy it’s like he’s walking into a sunburn.

She’s not entirely sure how to move around him, anymore. She tries to stay normal—so she doesn’t confuse Foggy, probably—but she does odd little things, flicking the air behind his head to see if she can get him to react, knocking into him accidentally-on-purpose and not saying sorry. She used to shift around him, not crash into him, and the difference is electric. Foggy watches it, and Elektra watches it, and Matt _feels_ it, all through him, because this is what she does with Elektra, too. She pushes at her and around her and against her, trying to get a reaction. She’s a cat tugging at their heels.

One night, Elektra comes back to the water tower smelling like Darcy, and that’s normal, that’s typical, but it whines in him like a mosquito. Matt doesn’t even have to think about it. He stands, and comes to meet her, his hands loose, his heart beating fast.

“Tonight,” he says. He doesn’t know what else to say. “Tonight.”

She doesn’t have to ask him what he means. Elektra pulls her scarf down, away from her mouth. “You’re certain.”

“I’m certain.” He wets his lips. “You were right. You—I’m sure.”

She watches him, for a minute. Then she nods, once.

“I’ll go first,” she says, and it’s done.

.

.

.

_Come out with us tonight._

Darcy looks at her phone for a full minute before it processes. First of all, Elektra Natchios doesn’t generally text her invitations. She’s better at showing up unannounced and dragging Darcy off somewhere. Secondly, she’s pretty sure that _out_ means not _out to a bar_ or _out to a club_ but _out to beat the shit out of people in dark alleyways._ Which, Jesus fucking Christ, how is that an invite? And thirdly: holy sneak attack, Batman.

_Not like I just figured out I’m pining, or anything._

On the other bed, Lindsay makes an irritated noise. “Are you gonna stare at your phone all night?”

“Fuck off,” says Darcy, and rolls onto her side, putting her back to Lindsay. Lindsay scoffs, and puts her headphones back on. Darcy can hear the music through the buds, bad country and what sounds like moans from softcore porn. She nearly crams her pillows over her ears. Usually she’s all for women watching porn—well, decent porn, anyway—but Christ, does Lindsay have to do that _while Darcy’s in the room_?

 _Come out with us tonight,_ her phone still says. She’d kind of been hoping it’d changed in the past thirty seconds. Darcy taps her nails against the rim of her phone case, and then hits the Reply button.

_By us, you mean…?_

It only takes thirty seconds before E (and she’s just E, in Darcy’s address book, no _Elektra_ or _Natchios_ or any combination of the two) replies.

_Just Matthew and me._

She taps at the case, again, and again. Darcy folds her pillow over her ears, and swypes out the next message with one hand.

 _I don’t wanna, y’know. Throw off your groove or whatever. I don’t know. Seems kinda like I’d be invading._ Then, after a few seconds, she adds, _Have you asked Matt?_

This time the reply comes back even faster. _Yes. He says he doesn’t mind._

She thinks about calling Matt to confirm, but decides that might be passive-aggressive. At least right away. All likelihood is that Matt and Elektra are already together, anyway. There’s an odd, puffy feeling in her stomach, like someone’s blowing up a balloon and pushing her guts into weird places. She should say she has homework, or something. Make up an excuse with Foggy or even Lindsay, though they all know she kind of despises Lindsay. Say she’s at Jen’s. Give them a valid reason why she shouldn’t go. It’s easy enough.

She types halfway through the message, and then stops. Darcy presses her phone to her lips. _E is E_ , she thinks. And E wouldn’t ask without a reason. And E won’t tell her why unless Darcy comes right out and _asks_ her why. It’s not that E wouldn’t get an implied question, she’d just completely ignore it. So, blunt it is. She deletes the excuse, swypes a new message.

_Why are you asking me?_

Silence from the phone for a good minute and a half. She doesn’t watch the screen. Absolutely _does not_.

 _Do you not want to come?_ E says.

Stalemate. She squishes the pillow over her face for a minute. Then she shoots up off the bed (Lindsay jumps, blinking at her) and snags her only peacoat off the back of her desk chair. It’s halfway on by the time she’s out the door.

Darcy can’t parkour, not exactly, so when she calls E to ask for directions, Elektra tells her a corner in Hell’s Kitchen and says “We’ll be waiting in the alley.” It’s not too far from Jen’s, so Darcy stops by and changes clothes—she has a pair of black skinny jeans she used to wear in freshman year that are supple enough not to tear, and she doesn’t think a hoodie would be a good idea but at least she can wear a black turtleneck—before looking up the cross street on GoogleMaps. She almost doesn’t see the alley at first, the shadow of a shadow in a shadow, but then Elektra says “Hey,” in a quiet voice, and Darcy crosses to meet them.

She almost doesn’t recognize them, at first. Either of them. Elektra looks strange with the scarf around her face, her eyes dark and slashing, her mouth hidden, her nose covered. Matt, though—Matt’s alien. There’s a strip of cloth around his eyes. It doesn’t do much to hide his face, not really, but she still almost doesn’t realize it’s him until he clears his throat and says, “Darcy,” in a very low voice. (It doesn’t make her toes curl, not at all.) He reaches out, and touches a gloved hand (gloved, gloved, no prints, obviously) to her shoulder. “Thought something had happened.”

“Had to change.” She hadn’t thought about a mask. She should have thought about a mask. She swallows. “Um. I should have mentioned that, sorry.”

“He worries,” Elektra says, and offers a strip of cloth. It’s another scarf, Darcy realizes. Black, not red. “Just in case.”

Darcy looks at her for a moment. Then she reaches out with both hands. Her fingers ought to be shaking, but they’re still. She wraps the scarf around her face, not quite right, and Elektra fixes it without comment, pulling it tight on one side, loosening it on another. Matt hasn’t turned his face away from them, even if he’s careful not to touch. When E pulls back, she nods, once.

“Don’t roll too fast, it should stay.”

“Okay.” Darcy heaves a breath. “Um. Is there, like—is there a procedure, or something? I don’t—I’m not sure what you guys even do.”

 _Or why you invited me,_ she thinks, but that’s a lie even to herself, because there’s something burning low in her guts and she thinks Elektra might have known that secret since the start.

“Usually we listen,” says E. “But we have someone we’re looking for, tonight. So we walk.”

Most of Hell’s Kitchen has picked itself back up from the horrors of the eighties and nineties, but there are still places that Darcy wouldn’t walk alone at night, and those are the ones they go to. They stick to the shadows, careful to stay out of sight of any cars. Darcy walks between them, Matt in front, Elektra behind, and she can’t help but thinking of an honor guard.

“Who is it we’re looking for?” Darcy asks.

Elektra’s eyes flicker to Matt’s back, and she says nothing.

“There’s a man,” Matt says, clipped. “He lives near where I used to. I saw his wife the other day, in church. She had broken bones.”

Something very cool and silvery slips into Darcy’s heart. It’s almost like a dagger. A high whine starts in the back of her head. “He hits her?”

“We’re going to find out,” Elektra says.

She thinks it takes longer than it ought to, coming to this house, but they’ve been walking in circles. To throw off a tail, she realizes. They’d usually take rooftops, but with her here, they can’t. The back door to the little house is open, and light spills out onto the steps, golden and yellow. There’s no sound from inside. There’s a man, though, standing and smoking in the alley, and Matt goes all prickling still when they get within sight of him. “That’s him,” he says, and Elektra doesn’t question how he knows it. She just nods.

“I’ll go.”

Her heart’s beating so fast, so, so fast, she can taste it on her tongue. When Elektra turns, Darcy reaches forward, catches Elektra’s sleeve. “E.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Elektra says, but her eyes crinkle a little, even if they’re all knives. “Don’t worry about me.”

Suddenly, she wants to kiss her. She wants it so badly that it hurts, and at her shoulder, at her back, Matt goes still again, a completely different kind of still. Darcy swallows, her mouth dry, and she lets Elektra go. Their gloves catch against each other, smooth and rough.

“Do you want to come?” Elektra says.

Darcy looks up at Matt. She thinks he might protest, might say no. _Elektra, be careful,_ he’d said, like she was something to protect. But this time, no. There’s nothing. He rests his hand to the small of her back, bends, and when he touches his mouth to her hair it sends a fireball down her throat. He doesn’t say anything, but God, that touch says everything.

“Do you want me to?” Darcy says.

Elektra draws her forward, out of the dark.

.

.

.

They run for another two hours before finally clambering back in through the window of Elektra’s Garment District apartment, and pulling the curtains.

Elektra’s drenched. She’d stepped out of the way of a knife on the docks, and ended up stepping _off_ the docks and into the river. It hadn’t exactly been graceful—though she will swear, until her dying day, that it was intentional—and the Hudson is clinging to her in a noxious stream, sticking her hair to the back of her neck. Matthew was clipped with a piece of broken glass, though the cut’s already stopped bleeding, too shallow to bother about. He stands awkwardly near the kitchen counter, hands in his pockets. Darcy, though—Darcy kicks her shoes off and drops down hard enough on the end of the couch that she bounces, her glasses slipping down her nose. “Okay,” she says, after a moment. She’s breathing hard. “Okay. E, c’mere.”

“You could ask,” Elektra says, peeling off her gloves. There’s a cast to Darcy’s voice that she doesn’t particularly like. “It’s nice to ask.”

She huffs. There’s a smear of dirt over her jaw. Elektra’s fairly certain she hasn’t noticed it yet. “Will you _please_ come and sit with me, scorpion-lady, and help me not have a panic attack?”

“You’re not having a panic attack,” Matthew says. He pushes his hair out of his eyes. “You’re just…panicking.”

“Because _that’s_ a difference I need isolated,” says Darcy without any heat, and shuts her eyes to breathe. Elektra drops down next to her on the couch, and bends to undo her boots. Darcy leans into her side without hesitating, damp and clammy and trembling.

“You don’t need to panic,” Elektra says. There’s mud crusted in the knot. “You did well. You didn’t throw up and you didn’t scream.”

Darcy makes a funny crackling sound in the back of her throat. At the same time, Matthew slinks forward, angled away from them like he thinks he’s doing something wrong. Which, Elektra thinks, is something they’re going to deal with, but for now it can be set aside. “Then why does my heart feel like it’s going to explode? 

“Adrenalin,” Matthew says. Darcy hooks her hand into the pocket of his cargo pants. It makes him twitch, but she doesn’t let go. “It should start to fade soon.”

“Adrenalin,” she says, faintly, “is not my friend.”

The bow finally comes undone. Elektra heaves her foot free, and starts in on the second boot. At the same time, a burst of adrenalin shudders from the base of Darcy’s neck all the way down her spine. Elektra looks up at Matthew through her hair, and lifts her eyebrows. She’s not entirely certain if Matt can perceive something that subtle, but he either can, or he feels Darcy shivering, because he settles on her other side. The couch dips under his weight. “It fades,” he says again, and cups his hand to the back of her neck. Darcy makes another little sound, her eyes half-closing. “Just give it a little time.”

“We should be able to turn it on and off like a light switch. This is silly.”

“It’s a fight-or-flight response.” He pushes his thumb into the side of her throat, just a little. Then he stops, and Elektra can see it when the guilt flickers across his face, automatic. Darcy has to be able to feel it, too, or feel _something_ , because her spine curves as she leans back into Matthew’s hand.

“You should just—not stop doing that,” Darcy says. “That feels really good.”

Matthew’s mouth shifts a little, turns softer. He strokes his thumb over the back of Darcy’s neck. Elektra returns to her boot. “If you breathe, it helps.”

“Because I’m totally not breathing right now, Matt,” says Darcy. “I’m just going to turn grey and asphyxiate to death on E’s new couch by forgetting to inhale.”

“Please don’t.” The boot pops off with a sucking sound like river mud. Elektra wrinkles her nose, and nudges it away from her carpet. “I would have to explain that.”

“Not if you throw me in the river, you don’t.” Darcy turns her head to look at Matthew. “You’d help her dispose of my corpse, right, if this happened?”

“Probably not, since that’s a major felony, and I do eventually want to have an actual job.”

“You’re a bastard.” She glances at Elektra, lips curving. “Matt’s a bastard, E.”

Elektra doesn’t really have anything to say to that. She looks at them, standing barefoot on the carpet river water still running down the back of her neck, and suddenly, she’s struck speechless. She just has to stand there and watch them, Matthew’s head bent down to Darcy’s as he listens to her curse a blue streak under her breath.

Matthew realizes it first. “Elektra?”

Elektra pauses, deliberately. “Hm?”

“You’re staring,” Darcy says.

She huffs a breath, lets her mouth quirk up. “I’m staring?”

“That is known as a pointed stare. Why is there pointed staring going on in here?”

“You’re covered in dirt and I don’t want it to get on my furniture.”

Darcy sticks her tongue out. “You’re the one that fell in the river.”

“I did not _fall._ I elected to get out of the way.”

“You totally slipped and fell.” Darcy hesitates. “Scared the crap out of me. Don’t do that.”

Elektra glances up at Matthew, her eyes flicking from his hand at Darcy’s neck, to the cut on his arm, to the look on his face, closed off and careful. _Mine,_ she thinks again. “I’ll try not to.”

They’re all quiet, for a second.

“So that’s what you do,” Darcy says. “At night.”

“Most of the time,” says Matthew.

“Huh,” she says, and goes quiet again. She bites at her thumbnail, thinking. By the time Elektra’s changed clothes, put on something dry and wound her hair back up out of her face, Darcy still hasn’t said a word. Matthew’s thinking, head tipped, hyperfocused, and she’s not sure whether to smack him, or bite him. She could do both, she supposes, but that might be a bit overwhelming.

“Would you mind?” Darcy says, her voice rattling a little. Matthew goes very still. Elektra almost can’t breathe. “If I tagged along again. Would you mind?”

She doesn’t need Matthew’s senses to see the longing in her, the way her fingers have crooked into claws. It’s all in her voice, the curl of it, the shadow of it. The way the consonants go soft. _There,_ Elektra thinks, _there you are, that’s what you are,_ and when Darcy turns back to look at her something, some of the want, must show on her face, because color flares up high in her cheeks. Matthew’s standing apart from them, but his hands are loose and his lips are parted and he’s listening, so damn hard that she thinks he might break himself, and God, she knows him too well. They’ve already agreed she’ll go first, already know that if either of them will be able to make the offer it would probably be her, but that’s not going to work. Not with how he’s flinching. If she’s here, he won’t be able to say a word. He’s sure, they’re sure, but if she’s here, he won’t be able to speak through the history and the habit. And he _needs_ to speak. So does she, though she doesn’t know what to say.

“This is ridiculous,” Elektra says, to both of them, to herself, and then she catches Darcy by her borrowed scarf and kisses her.

Darcy freezes. So does Matthew—she can hear it in the sudden silence from the other end of the room, the way it seems like all the air has been sucked out of the apartment. Darcy’s lipstick is flavored with something a little sweeter and sharper than cherry, and she shivers all over when Elektra twists her hands into the scarf and pulls her in so they can collide, chests and stomachs and hips and legs. Darcy quakes, her breath shaking, and then—and she can feel it coming, the tension, building and building in the split second before it breaks—she erupts like a volcano, leaning hard into Elektra, cupping her palm to the nape of Elektra’s neck, pushing back with her teeth and her tongue and her breath. Coffee and lipstick, a trace of cigarette smoke, and Darcy makes the tiniest sound when Elektra nips in to her mouth, curls her tongue just enough to have Darcy scraping with her nails. She _whines,_ and that’s—the world whites out for a moment, because she’s fractured and shattering, and Darcy’s slid her hands into Elektra’s damp, river-stained hair to hold her there, keep her close. Elektra sets her teeth hard enough in Darcy’s lower lip that it’ll swell, that there’ll be a mark. When she pulls back—too soon, too fast, not nearly soon enough—her lipstick is smeared, and the mix of colors on Darcy’s mouth is enough to make Elektra want to eat her alive. She doesn’t say anything, just touches her fingers to Darcy’s cheek—Darcy’s eyes are huge, her pupils blown wide, and she’s not even breathing, really, just staring like the world’s exploded and there’s nothing human left in her—before turning.

Matthew is rooted to the spot, and so he doesn’t resist or even really register her existence as she steps in, tugs him down by the collar of his shirt, and kisses him too. He heaves a breath and twitches so violently that she thinks he might tear the shirt, but he doesn’t yank away from her. She doesn’t linger with him, not nearly for so long, but it’s enough to pass the lipstick from her to him, enough that she knows he’ll be able to taste Darcy in her mouth.

Elektra doesn’t say anything to either of them, really. Not at first. She doesn’t think her voice will work. She heaves the window open, and clambers out. Before she closes the apartment up again, though, she crouches, and looks right at Matthew.

“Your turn,” she says. Then, to Darcy: “I’ll be back in an hour if you don’t call me back sooner.”

A noise catches in the back of Darcy’s throat, almost frightened. “E—”

She’s pretty sure she should be staying. When she looks at the way Darcy’s eyes have blown wide, the sudden terror, she _wants_ to stay. She wants to claw at whoever made her look that way. But there’s one thing she’s absolutely crystal on, and it’s that whatever they have to work out, she’s not going to be able to do a thing to make it better. She’d probably only make it harder.

Elektra steals another glance at Matthew (he’s lifted a hand to his lips, as if he’s disbelieving) and digs her fingernails into the wooden sill.

“I’ll be back,” she says again, and she tries to say everything she means, she really does— _I’ll be back for you no matter what happens, both of you are mine, please understand that, please hear me_ —but she’s not sure it comes through. Darcy chokes a little. “I’ll be back, all right? In an hour. If you don’t call me back sooner.”

_Please, let them call me back sooner._

She slams the window shut behind her, and jumps off the fire escape, because maybe she’s a little bit of a coward, too.

.

.

.

Darcy can’t breathe. Her lip stings, there’s a streak of fire left behind on her tongue, lipstick smeared over her mouth, and she can’t breathe. She can’t move, or speak, or think. Her brain’s shut down, and her body’s shaking, and her heart is going to burst, because there’s no way that happened. There’s _no_ way that happened, not in any reality she has available to her, not in any reality in the universe. There’s no way she was just kissed— _no_ , some very small part of her says, _not kissed, not quite, more wrecked_ —by Elektra Natchios. And even if she was, it wouldn’t have happened in front of Matt. And even if it had, Elektra wouldn’t have kissed him after, and Matt wouldn’t be standing there with their lipstick on his mouth and not even breathing, so still that he looks like a statue.

No. None of that happened. None of it _is_ happening. So she can’t breathe, and she can’t think, and she can’t move.

The window’s been shut for a minute—maybe, maybe it’s only been a few seconds, maybe it’s been days—before Darcy finally swallows. (—she can still feel fingers in her hair, the bite of E’s nails, the press of her hips and the fierce unyielding possessive sense of _mine, mine, mine_ that had been draped around her by hands and lips and tongue, but that’s not possible, _that’s not possible—_ ) Her lip’s split, and she can taste a bit of blood over the chalk of the lipstick. When she finally moves, it’s to touch a thumb to her mouth. She can’t believe it. She won’t.

Matt makes a noise like he’s been stabbed when she does it, though, moving and stopping in one, so that he’s shifted a few inches over on the carpet but he hasn’t come any closer to her. Darcy watches him, stricken, because _Jesus Christ._ She’d just kissed E _in front of Matt._ Elektra had kissed her _in front of Matt._ She’s never seen this look on Matt’s face before, so far past astonishment that it’s crossed the line into something unknowable, twisted and torn between half a dozen different things, open in a way that he’s never been before. Darcy drops her hand from her lips, but only for a moment. She has to cover her mouth again. When she sweeps her tongue over her lips, she tastes blood and lipstick.

 _Say sorry,_ something hisses in the back of her head. _Apologize, get out of here, don’t come back,_ but that’s the last thing she wants, to leave, she’s fairly certain she’s never going to find anyone like either of them again if she leaves, and she can’t lose them, she can’t, she won’t. _I can’t lose you._ It’s ringing in her head, _your turn,_ like it’s something Elektra and Matt have _talked about,_ like it’s something that has a history between them, like there’s something going on, but that’s impossible, isn’t it, because there’s no way in hell or heaven or the universe or _anywhere_ that they would have been talking about this—

Darcy opens her mouth. She means to say something, a quip, maybe, she’s good at those when she doesn’t think, but her voice cracks apart and the only thing that she manages to get through is “Matt—” And then she has to stop, because what the hell is she supposed to say? What the ever-loving fuck is she supposed to say when it looks like Matt’s not even hearing her, when he’s listening so hard that she’s faded out of existence, when she can see the bloody red of her lipstick on his mouth (left there by Elektra, Jesus, _Jesus Christ_ ) and it looks like _she’s_ the one that’s done that? When there’s something in her that’s practically screaming at the sight of it, _wanting_ that, wanting to have been the one to do that, wanting that look to never, ever leave his face because it’ll mean she owns him the way he’s always owned her, without ever realizing it?

“Matt,” she says again, and her eyes burn. “Matt, I don’t—”

She doesn’t really see him move, but in a breath, a heartbeat, he’s crossed the room and pulled her to him. Darcy starts to shake, every cell in her body buzzing, as he rests his hands at her back, dips his head, leans into her shoulder. He’s trembling, too, just a little, and when he breathes out, it’s unsteady and tickling against her throat. Words catch on her tongue. Darcy fists her hands in the fabric of his shirt, pressing in close even though she knows she shouldn’t, swallowing over and over and over, because this isn’t what’s supposed to be happening. He’s supposed to be angry with her. He’s supposed to leave, not—not do this, whatever it is. Her heart pounds against her ribs like a bird trying to escape. Matt lifts his head, leans his cheek to her hair, taking in deep breaths as if he needs steadying, as if he’s about to fall. Like he’s drowning. “Don’t cry.” His voice breaks. “Please don’t cry.”

And that, of course, makes her cry. She hiccups, which is _stupid_ , she hates crying and she hates hiccups, but Matt lifts his hand, touches his thumb to the space behind her ear, his fingers slipping into her hair, and she can’t help doing it again. Her brain still isn’t working. The rest of her is still racing to catch up. “I’m not crying.”

He ignores that. He mutters something under his breath, and she hears it again, Elektra on the fire escape, her voice cracking and rattling and broken. _Your turn. An hour._ Matt touches the small of her back, the space between her shoulder blades, the back of her neck, traces his hand back down again. The touch echoes. _Stop arguing,_ she thinks, and hides her face in his shirt. _Just stop. Stop thinking, stop arguing. Stop just for a minute._ Matt lets out another shaking breath, and cinches her so close to him that her feet are coming up off the floor. She can hear his heartbeat, and it’s racing. Darcy digs her nails into his shirt, and doesn’t say a word. She thinks if she opens her mouth now, she might scream, and besides—her lungs are full of him and of E she doesn’t want to lose that.

Matt stands silent until she stops shaking, until finally her feet are resting flush with the floor again, until she can take a full breath and look up at him. She’s not sure if he’s thinking, or trying not to think, but there’s still lipstick on his mouth. Something flushes fire into her throat to look at it. Matt’s lungs catch, who knows why, and he tips into her a little, trying to swallow.

“Do you remember—” he heaves a breath, lets it out “—do you remember what—when you thought Elektra and I were fighting?”

“And you said—you said you needed time.”

“Yes.” His hand splays broad over her spine, and her skin’s burning underneath the touch. Matt can’t speak, for a moment. She thinks of the way he’d been, that day, how he’d sounded, the way he’d folded her into him as if he were desperate. She’s going to rattle to pieces. She can’t say a word. “A few days—” He stops, swallows, starts again. “Elektra—a few days before, she asked me if—”

“Matt—”

“No, just—” He shifts back and tips forward again, and he’s so close that their noses are almost touching, his forehead’s brushing hers, and he presses his hands into her waist, not letting go. “Just—listen, just for a second. She asked me if—she asked how long I’ve been in love with you, and I couldn’t give her an answer.”

Darcy can’t breathe. She can’t _breathe_.

“I couldn’t,” he says again. “I still can’t. Not—not really. But—it wasn’t wrong of her, to ask. Because I was.” Matt swallows, and touches his fingertips very lightly to the space beneath her ear. “I still am.”

“You can’t say that.” She starts to pull back, and figures out she can’t, because instead of moving away she’s just twisting her hands tighter into his shirt, trying to balance. “You can’t—you can’t say that.”

He doesn’t draw away from her, not like she thinks he will. Instead, he drops his hand to her neck, to the pulse in her throat. “Why can’t I say that?”

How is she supposed to think? How is she supposed to get back to reality when the hallucination _keeps on going?_ “You can’t,” she says again. “You can’t—E—”

“I’m learning,” he says, “that one doesn’t eclipse the other.”

 _(Polyromantic,_ Darcy had said, and E had hummed like something had just clicked into place in the back of her head—)

“You can’t say that.” Darcy tries to swallow, and fails. “You—you can’t say that unless you mean it. You _can’t_ , Matt, you don’t understand, you—I can’t—”

“Darcy—”

“If you said that and didn’t mean it I couldn’t come back from that, you can’t just—”

“Darcy,” he says again, and she can taste warmth on her mouth and his hands are in her hair and she can’t breathe. She _can’t_. “I mean it.”

She loops her fingers around his wrists, shuts her eyes, gulps in air. There are tears on her cheeks again. Her makeup’s a wreck, her knees are shaking, and she’s going to fall utterly to pieces. “You mean it.”

“I mean it.” He bends, touches his mouth to the very edge of her lips. Darcy shudders, and nearly chokes. “I mean it. Please don’t cry.”

There’s an instant where she knows exactly what’s going to happen before it does, and she doesn’t pull away. It’s not like Elektra’s kiss at all, not really, though there’s still the echo of E’s lipstick, the scorching sense of her. He’s barely touching her, so light she can only just feel it at first, but then he curls his hands closer into her hair. He’s branding her, she thinks, slow and careful, and what starts as something delicate shifts into something blistering, consuming, devastating. When she shifts and breaks and presses back up into his mouth, Matt makes a soft sound in the back of his throat that might be her name, muffled against her teeth. Then they’ve backed up, her shoulders touch the wall, and he’s pressing close into her until she can’t tell if he’s touching her or she’s touching him or if they’re not just going to stay this way until she dies, her hands up underneath his shirt to dig her nails into his skin and his fingers pressing hard into her hips, into her ribs. It’s like holding a shooting star at the back of her throat, fire and heat and warmth and _joy_ , ever so slowly, a giddiness in her chest that she can’t stop from growing. It would burn him if he hadn’t been fire already. Her mouth’s buzzing and her heart won’t stop skipping when she finally smiles, and she can’t keep kissing him if she’s smiling, but she can’t help it. She can’t make herself stop. “I’m not crying.”

He touches his thumbs to her cheeks. “You _are_ crying.”

“Shut up, I’m not.”

He’s still shaking a little when he kisses the corner of her lips again, a sliver of her cheek. “You are. You don’t have to cry. You hate crying.”

“I can’t fucking stand crying.” She gulps, once, twice, three times. It doesn’t help. “But you—E and you— _both_ of you, Jesus, I can’t—”

“If you don’t want this, just—”

“I want this.” She can still taste him on the roof of her mouth, him and Elektra, there’s lipstick on her teeth and fire on her tongue and she’s shaking from the force of it. “ _I_ want this. More than anything right now, I want—and E wouldn’t have, if she didn’t, but I didn’t think that you—either of you—”

“I love you,” he says again, and brushes his lips over hers. “I love you. I don’t even know how long I’ve loved you. But I thought—I don’t know what I thought, that it wasn’t possible, because of Elektra, but she adores you. She doesn’t say it, she never says it, but she does. It’s like—I can feel it in her, when she looks at you, it’s like she’s—like she’s burning up from the inside, gasoline and newspaper. And—and I think you like her, at least—”

“Jesus Christ,” she says, because she’s not entirely sure that just came out of his mouth, not sure _like_ begins to cover everything that’s going on in her right now. She’s half in love with Elektra already and this is just making it worse. Or better. Or worse. _She adores you._ And with that, Darcy’s in pieces. “Jesus, Matt, slow down, I’m still kind of—I’m still kind of stuck on the kissing piece, slow down a little—”

“I want this.” He shakes his head, cups her face in his hands. He’s still talking, because he’s Matt, and she can hear the fear in his voice, she’s only ever heard this once and that was when he finally started telling her the truth, desperation and terror and longing as deep as a galaxy, just creeping over the edge of frantic. “I want this. I really—I really hope you want this, because I need you, and she needs you, it’s—all of it’s more, when you’re there, it’s—it’s _more,_ you make us more, and I just—”

She kisses him. Darcy goes up on her tiptoes and kisses him, and it’s even better this time even though she can’t hold it together. She can’t stop smiling, and her throat won’t stop hurting, and the bubbling in her chest has slipped past disbelief, skipped over dizzy, and gone straight to wonder, but it’s even better this time, because he kisses her back, mouth pressing into hers and tipping until sparks catch again, and _god_ , she thinks she’s going to combust. The sharp cinnamon of Elektra’s gum hovers between them, even if it’s only in her imagination.

“I want this,” she says. There’s a full-bodied shivering under her skin that makes her think of an earthquake. “I—I really, really want this. I just didn’t think you—either of you would.”

“How could we not want you?” Matt says, and he’s so genuinely puzzled by the idea that she’s laughing when she presses her palms to his jaw and kisses him.

Darcy texts Elektra about ten minutes after that, and Elektra returns within what feels like seconds. According to Matt, she’s been hovering a few buildings down walking in circles on a rooftop. She’s very studiously casual as she slips back in through the window, but her eyes dart from Matt, standing beside the couch, to Darcy, waiting closer to the window with her hands locked, in a way that can only be called nervous. “Well?”

Her heart’s beating very fast. “You could have used words, E.”

Elektra hooks her hair back behind her ears, takes two steps closer, sideways, the way something feral might. “You two don’t seem to _get_ words.”

“And you really don’t seem to get subtle,” says Darcy. She reaches out and tucks her hands into Elektra’s pockets, pulling her another step forward, and E’s lashes flicker. She can see something, lurking behind E’s mouth, the door to the lighthouse opening just a crack. “So—so this is gonna be really clear. Do you really—you meant it, what you did before. Right?”

Elektra gives her a look that says _what, are you stupid?_ “Yes.”

“The three of us.”

“ _Yes_. Was that not clear?”

“No, it was—it was fairly clear. Just—I like words.”

Elektra’s eyes dart over Darcy’s shoulder to Matt’s face, a half-smile angling around the edge of his mouth. When she looks at Darcy again, her lips part. She swallows. “You like words.”

“I really, really like words.”

“Lawyers,” says Elektra under her breath.

“Not yet, technically.”

“ _Lawyers_ ,” she says again, louder this time. Darcy grins at her.

“Well, these—I have words, okay? These are my words. And—and they’re actually serious words. I was thinking about just like…quoting _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ or something—”

Elektra looks revolted.

“—but I decided that would be a bad idea, so—” She takes a breath. “If you want this, I want this. I _really_ want this. But only if both of you want this. And Matt and I have been—kind of talking. Ish. And he said something about you being the one to bring it up in the first place. With the two of you. But I just—I really want to hear it, so if you do want to do this—”

“Both of you are stupid,” Elektra says, and then she’s snaking her hands up around the nape of Darcy’s neck, nipping into her mouth. Matt’s a fire, she thinks, as Darcy puts her hands on E’s hips, slipping her fingers up underneath the hem of her shirt, pressing close into her skin and into the wiry fierceness of her. Matt’s a fire that starts slow and burns blazing, but Elektra’s something wilder than that. Storms on the sun. An avalanche, a hurricane. She’s going to get knocked off her feet. Elektra digs her fingernails into Darcy’s scalp, before she pulls back just enough that she stings at Darcy’s lips with her teeth, scraping, pulling back, scraping again. “You’re _stupid_ ,” she says again, but her voice is rough. _Lovely, dark and deep,_ she thinks, and she can’t remember where that’s from, but that’s Elektra, right now. Dark and deep and thorny and beautiful. Darcy tries to catch her breath, but Elektra puts her mouth to the angle at the back of Darcy’s jaw, to the curve of her ear, sets her teeth into Darcy’s earlobe, and then, finally, agonizingly, pulls back. “You’re both _utterly idiotic_.”

“Thanks,” Darcy says, or tries to say, but it comes out as an odd rasping hum. Elektra smiles, or bares her teeth, or both, and nudges hard into Darcy’s temple with her mouth. Darcy only realizes that the hand pressing into the small of her back is Matt’s and not E’s when she hears something curling and pleased from behind her, a little sound that she wants to hear over and over and over again because it shoots right to her blood, right to her guts. Matt’s fingers are still crooked against her spine when Elektra seizes him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him down to meet her. It’s an _I told you so_ that’s silent and echoing all at once, and God, Jesus, Matt’s hand is on her back and Elektra still has one hand locked into the waistband of Darcy’s jeans but they’re kissing and it doesn’t sting the way she expects. It turns her shapeless, broiling, and all she wants to do is touch them when she sees it, the gentle viciousness of it. She wants to put her hands all over them, lick at the sharpness of Matt’s jaw and the line of Elektra’s throat. She strokes her fingers down Matt’s arm, nearly tangles one hand in Elektra’s hair, but there’s no time; when they break apart Matt bends, and he tastes like Elektra and like the cherry of her lipstick and it’s golden sunlight in her mouth. Elektra slips her hand up underneath Darcy’s shirt, stroking her fingers over her ribs, and she can’t help it. She starts to shake.

“Idiots,” Elektra says again, but she purrs it. Darcy doesn’t have it in her to argue anymore.

.

.

.

They don’t have to say anything to Foggy. He walks into the room in Carman, a few days later, and just stops, watching them. They’re not touching, not any of them, but he walks in and stops dead as if he’s seen something extraordinary. When Darcy starts blushing, he rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, and points. “I told you so, Lewis,” he says, and dumps his crap on the bed. “I _fucking told you so._ ”

“Shut up,” Darcy says, and turns to hide her face in the pillow.

Matt, wisely, he thinks, does not ask.


End file.
